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THE 

HISTORY END PHILOSOPHY 



OF 



ATHEISM 



IN FOUR LECTURES, 



IB Y — 



Prof. A. H. DARROW, 

PRACTICAL PHRENOLOGIST. 

n 

PRICE, 25 CENTS. 






BUTLER, MO., 1SS3. 






Address All Orders to A, H, DARROW, Hartford, 
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Entered according- to act of Congress, in the year 1883, by A. H. Darrow, in the office 
of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



REPUBLICAN Print, Butler, Mo. 






THE 



HISTORY HHD PHILOSOPHY 



jL A. Jl. JL. JL Xacc7 JL Kozr^ AlAe 



♦ 

The following lectures were prepared for publication under a 
deep sense of responsibility to God for His strength and guid- 
ance. They are intended to counteract the growing tendency to 
unbelief, which has of late become so prevalent as to involve 
even the fundamental principles of religion, and create unusual 
apathy even in the churches themselves, where faith ought to 
abound. 

Ko design is cherished of -superseding any part of the Bible, 
or any of its necessary helps; but rather to remove those objec- 
tions which, hardening into prejudice in the doubtful mind, pre- 
vent a candid and impartial inquiry into the evidence upon. 
which religion rests. 

Voltaire, who was a Deist, prophesied the downfall of Chris- 
tianity before the year 18oo; but in ISoo (forty years after the 
prophecy was uttered,) there were 14. 000. 000 Protestant Chris- 
tians, and 0,000,000 Romanists, among the English-speaking 
people of the globe, out of a total popnlotion of 24, 000, 000 — 
more than three-fourths of the people had helped to give the lie 
to the infidel's prophecy. In 1881, four-fifths of the English- 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 



speaking inhabitants of the globe were enrolled as Christians. 
To attain this continued triumph unceasing labor of mird and 
heart, voice and pen, has been required. Little did Voltaire, 
who erected a monument to God, imagine thai, in a single cen- 
tury, the enemies of Christianity would leave the Deistieal plat- 
form upon which he stood, and boldly declare upon the public 
rostrum as Ingersoll and others have done, that there is no room 
in philosophy for a Personal God, and no evidence in Nature of 
a benevolent one. And in these bold assertions, the}' only fol- 
low the atheistical surveys and maps of Tyndall, Spencer, Hux- 
ley, Haeckel, Fiske and others, who lead the van of Godless 
specialists and superficial theorizcrs of both continents. 

Well has the celebrated David Nelson, in his "Cause and 
Cure of Infidelity." remarked that ignorance and depravity are 
the sole causes of scepticism. This has been true in the past 
ages of the world's history, and is preeminently true of the pres- 
ent. Men well-informed on other subjects are found lamentably 
ignorant of religious truth, and the history connected therewith, 
which is so illustrative of its principles. Having imbibed a 
smattering knowledge of some superficial objections to Christi- 
anity, they exercise a distressing freedom and presumption in 
rejecting and spurning what they so little comprehend. 

Science, too, has been presented under many false colors, 
covertly yet purposely to undermine the faith and destroy the 
moral fabric of Christendom. Many ministers and God-fearing 
persons have been thus misled, and found out too late their 
error. It is not Orthodoxy in the pulpit, nor stale creeds in the 
libraries, that has so widely corrupted the practice and paral- 
ized the faith of people professing to be Christians, but it is the 
insidious serpent of unbelief, under its deceptive cloak of "vain 
philosophy," and "science falsely so called." So transient a 
thing is the sceptical philosophy founded on false science, that 
it must needs change its front, and alter its name, almost every 
decade. Thus we have Deism, Rationalism, Agnosticism, Lib- 
eralism, and a score of other names, all meaning, in this age, 
one and the same thing, viz: Atheism, for even the Deists, (so 
called) of this age, are well-nigh unanimous in rejecting a Per- 
sonal God, and therefore have»in reality no God at all in their 
thoughts and imaginations, since a principle, without a living 



HISTORY AM) PHILOSOPHY OF A'i'Ii KISM. 3 



fountain from which it emanates, is merely a thing of the imagi- 
nation, • 

* * * * an airy nothing, 
Without a local habitation and a name. 

In the hope that the following pages may induce hundreds to 
Cast away their doubts and fears and sensuous lethargy, and 
beg-in at once a reverent and industrious investigation of the evi- 
dences, (either experimental or historical,) upon which our in 
comparable religion, with all its attendant civilization, is found- 
ed; the few thoughts of the succeeding pages are prayerfully 
submitted to the consideration of fellow-travelers to the tomb. 

Butler, Mo., March 5th, 1883. 




4 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

LECTURE 1. 

Rescues the Unwritten Word From Impious Hands— Shows its Value 
to Christians — Transparent Follies of the Agnostics. 

If it were possible for the best sculptor to create a bust of mar- 
ble that would be a perfect representation of the Savior; and 
another that would accurately portray to our minds the disgust- 
ing visage of a Nero, a Caligula, a Domition, a Robespierre, or 
any other noted atheist of the world; and we should place one 
of the figures on one side of the pulpit or platform, and the other 
on the other side; perhaps nothing we. could possible say would 
have an effect equal to those marble effigies, in illustrating the 
measureless distinction between spirituality and carnality, be- 
tween the science and philosophy of heaven and those of hell, 
in their practical effects. With a somewhat similar end in view, 
we propose to give a brief sketch of the history and philosophy 
of Atheism, in order that we may put it upon its record; and, 
viewing it as we would an individual or corporation, try to esti- 
mate how much good and how much evil it has been already 
responsible for. Having accomplished this first survey, we 
shall then undertake to give a true historical sketch of Theism, 
go that we may obtain an idea of the relative merits of the two 
systems, as perfect as though the physical eye, and not the eye 
of the mind, were viewing them as ph # ysical objects. The value 
of many animals, you know, depends on their records; and that 
of others, upon that line of physical qualities, and mental traits, 
which is inherited. Of human beings, this is still truer, as mental 
traits predominate. Well, a record is a history; and the law of 
inheritance is the philosophy of character: so we shall proceed 
to develope the history and philosophy of Atheism- 

Every science, philosophy, or religion must have a foundation. 
In religion, nothing is more fundamental than the existence, 
personality, unity and fatherhood of God; yet these facts are 
stoutly denied by thousands of sceptics, and secretly doubted 
by almost an equal number of wavering and weak-kneed church 
members. Some persons seem to think it absurd to preach or 
lecture against Athei-m. They seem to think it a subject to be 
ignored. I have often thought that the old preacher gave good 



IUSTOUY AN 1 1) PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 



advice when he told the young preacher not to cross Devil-Creek 
until he got to it; but in this case, Devil Creek has been in the 
way of the travelling connection for a long time, waiting to be 
crossed, and I fear many pious persons have already been 
drowned therein by not taking the necessary precautions to in- 
sure a safe transit. Still more is this turgid stream in the way 
of the unconverted, hindering the work of the Spirit, casting- 
theories and other objects in the way of their conviction. I once 
knew a very intelligent lady who was often troubled at night by 
fears of burglars, but she generally dismissed her fears by this 
reflection, that she had always found everything all right in the 
morning, and would continue to find it so if she could only get 
to sleep. Such a course of reflection might do very well to quiet 
the mind when there were no real burgulars, but I very much 
doubt its efficacy and wisdom in cases of actual emergency. 
Fore- warned is fore-armed, but fore- soothed is fore-doomed. A 
living dog, warning us of present danger, is better than a dead 
lion, whose conquered enemies likewise belong to the ages of the 
past. The lesson of the hour, to those who are awake, is this: 
all truth, whether fundamental or super-positional, being of 
God, must be in harmony with itself. This being the case, it 
may sometimes be profitable for us to reconsider the principles, 
and re-examine the land-marks, of our faith, that we may build 
anew, upon a broader (because better understood) foundation; 
that our principles may be commeded to the world; that they 
may stand the wreck and turmoil of oppositions without and 
dissensions within; and that they may infuse new life and en- 
ergy into our own hearts. Perhaps some of us have, as Prof. Tyn- 
dall says, long held to the scaffolding of the Christian belief, 
and enjoyed less than we should of the beauty and comfort of 
the structure itself. If physical science has any new kinds of 
light to cast upon the temple of religious thought, to make it 
more resplendent, more awful and stupendous, let us by all 
means have those lights. We welcome not only all truth, but 
all light. We would embrace the spirit of the one, and the very 
essence of the other. Scepticism may hover over the ramparts 
where fine-spun theories and gauzy hypotheses hold undisputed 
sway in perpetual twilight, but it can never stand the light of 
developed truth in science or elsewhere. People do not distrus 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 



each other' s honesty as individuals. Outside the domain of 
scriptural theology, prejudice and bigotry is not inferred of 
every opponent, but the usual rules of credence are applied as . 
they exist among men, human testimony is received, opinions 
weighed, and arguments j ustly criticized. W hy not, then, meet 
the atheist in the open Held, where a Christian's sword is as 
good as an infidel's, since remaining in the garrison is becoming 
a detriment to our cause ¥■ Our territory cannot thus be. defend- 
ed, though we ourselves should die of starvation within the fort. 
This is the trial of faith demanded of us in the nineteenth cen- 
tury: God calls the veterans into the open fields, the home- 
guards can protect the : arsenals. Hitherto, the sword of God' s 
Holy Spirit has been wielded only within the area circumscribed 
by the walls of Zion : henceforth the scimeter of ridicule must 
contest with the sword for the supremacy over its own chosen 
fields, and its moss-covered ramparts. The fertile fields of sci- 
ence must hereafter yield us a revenue, and the towers of the 
world's philosophy a resting place, for the extension, upbuild-, 
ing, and prosperity of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. We 
ask only equal terms of combat, and we expect to compel this 
concession., The authority of a few pet scientists must be cast 
aside. Men of equal qualifications must be alike respected. 
Access to scientific truth shall not be barred by the authority of 
a Tyndall, any more than that of a Newton; nor of a Spencer,, 
more than a Locke;, nor of a Barwin, more than a Wheewell. 
Science belongs to us. by divine right, as the children of the Ma- 
ker of science, and we intend to .fight for it until we obtain it. 

Suppose we take a scriptural view of the subject. We are 
told that "the earth is the Lord' s, and the full ness thereof. ' ' 
-^-(PsaLxxiv: 1; 50:12; 1 Cor. xx : 26, 28.) And we are further 
informed that "no wisdom, nor counsel, nor understanding, is 
against the Lord."— (Proverbs. xxi : 30.) This is equivalent to 
an assertion of a divine claim upon every foot of ground which 
the Atheist is attempting to hold from us. JSTow, to hold real 
estate in any country, and under any government, a person 
must be either native-born or naturalized. Are we, then, doing 
our: duty as soldiers in the army of the Messiah, if we permit 
aliens and foreigners, who mock our king, despise his laws, and 
insult his government, to squat thus upon, and pretend by their 



HISTORY AM) PHILOSOPHY Of ATHEISM. 



own right to occupy, the territory right fully belonging to Him 
and his subjects, and necessary to the perpetuity of his govern- 
ments Forcible dispossession, in this case, can be no inf'ringv- 
ment of any personal rights held under a foreign title Thus 
every legitimate argument we can draw from science is seen to < 
be not only essential to a full and fair trial of the issiu s betw< en 
us and the Atheist, but the entire iield is ours by virtue of a 
governmental title, should it be established, in the further exam- 
ination of the evidence, that we ,have any government at all. 
Any attempt to deprive us of that part of the evidence drawn 
rom science, is therefore to be taken as an encroachment upon 
our rights, and any disposition to yield to such demands, must 
be regarded as indefensible weakness, or ignorance on the part 
of those who undertake to defend the cause of Christ. 

But even some Christians would have us believe that all the 
leading scientists of the world are Atheists, and that therefore it 
is best to let this subject alone. If this were true, there would 
indeed be cause for alarm, rather than apathy, — cause for every 
minister to take up the cudgel of science, and for ever}^ Christian 
youth to receive a scientific education, in order that the volume 
of Nature, upon which are inscribed most of the works of God, 
might be speedily rescued from impious hands. But it is not 
strictly true. There are, indeed, several men of scientific emi- 
nence who are sceptics, "a noisy minority," as Premier Glad- 
stone has said, and besides them we have a few meteoric bodies, 
like Ingersoll, Bradlaugh, Bennett, &c, that flash out brilliant- 
ly for a moment, only to leave the surrounding darkness deeper 
than before; but when we consider these greater minds, such as 
Newton, and Locke, and Gallileo, and Copernicus, and Wh'ee 
well, and Agassiz, and Dana, yea. and A-Vilford Hall, minds 
which remind us, rather, of the fixed stars, situated in the deeper 
vaults of the measureless heavens, and sending out their light 
to illuminate other spheres than their own, — such men are 
invariably found in whatever age or clime they live, to be Chris 
tians. And science itself must be essentially Christian, or hide 
itself aw T ay in a corner, while the poetiy and history and oratory 
a^nd philosophy and literature of the world continues to be the 
oommon property of the Christian church as at present. We 
need not, therefore, be afraid of science. Give us faithful and 



8 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

devout expositors thereof, and they shall be our guides. Sup- 
pose I am giving my testimony of salvation to a sceptic. He 
refuses to believe me. I then offer to him my Father's word, as 
given to me through the pages of the Bible. He declares the 
evidence insufficient, saying that either my Father is a liar, or I 
have not his word. I offer him proof of the genuineness of the 
word; but he declares that no amount of evidence would be suf- 
ficient to establish its divine authority, in the face of so many 
internal and external improbabilities. I then point him to my 
elder brother, the Man of Calvary, the Holy One of Israel, who 
whom even profane historians are want to extol as a righteous 
teacher sent from God. Still he refuses to be convinced, laughs 
me to scorn, and asserts that if the remaining brothers, (such as 
Bovelha, Confucius, &c.) whose veracity he affirms to be of 
equal weight, were interrogated, their testimony would be found 
to disagree with that of the Nazarine. I observe that my scepti- 
cal friend' s history, science and philosophy, being all wrong, 
constitute such serious impediments to his progress toward the 
larger truth, as to prevent him from making any investigation 
into that biblical science so necessary to the soul's welfare. I 
therefore agree to go with him through a brief examination of 
the works of God, as revealed to the careful student by the light 
of history, reason and philosophy. True science is the word of 
God to us, if we understand it aright. Give us a better transla- 
tion, so that all ministers may occasionally preach from it, with- 
out contradicting the written word. Let Christiau men like 
Cuvier and Agassiz, Newton and Gallileo, tell us the story of 
the rocks, and give us our maps of the heavens, and we shall all 
be amateur scientists. 

The scriptures reveal to us much of the science of man's moral 
and religious nature, in order that in our investigations of other 
sciences, we may have moral and religious objects and purposes 
always in view. If, by the light thus afforded, we continue to 
interpret other sciences consistently with revealed truth, our 
mental horizon will be ever widening, and our faith in God grow- 
ing stronger. But, alas ! how many have discovered the true 
light, and thus have been induced to nurture a vain philosophy, 
and a ''falsely so-called science," which, taking it's root in the 
slime of ignorance, growing up in the outer darkness of dispair, 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 



and borne upward by the winds of arrogance, has indeed gained 
a most marvelous mushroom growth, bat destined to as speedy 
decay. One of these apostles of "the gospel of dirt" declares 
that if he has rightly interpreted nature, there is either no over- 
ruling Intelligence, or He is a monster of iniquity, and his works 
of creation and providence are "one infinite crime." Further- 
more, he tells us, he finds no evidence in nature that the senti- 
ments of mercy and benevolence exist in the divine mind, and 
therefore he concludes that there is no God. Such an absurd 
conclusion, so abhorrent to right reason, so barren of religious 
sentiment, so indicative of madness, reminds us of the unaesthetic 
Peter Bell, of whom Wordsworth says : 

1 'A yellow primrose by the river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him 

And it was nothing more. ' ' 

So we might say of Ingersoll : 

The golden chain of heaven's care, of earth's unceasing progress, 
A law remorseless is to him , 

And it is nothing more. 

Such glooming, rebellious thoughts spring from an overween- 
ing love of self and selfish gratitude, generating a hatred of those 
vicissitudes which the heavenly Father sends upon us to develop 
in us nobler and god-like traits of character. It was to steady 
minds no stronger than that of Ingersoll, it was to calm passions, 
like his, too wild for mortal control, that the Bible was written, 
filled with the sentiment of God' s goodness, impressive with the 
weight of his love, calmy sublime in the certainty of his provi- 
dence. We learn from its pages that the shadows of this life 
are sent to make us love and prize the sunshine, not to make us 
doubt its existence. 

But where the sceptic has failed, oth«r men have succeeded. 
Nature has had interpreters whose souls reached out after, 
sought and found, those higher tones in her melodious voice, 
that speak to us of an ultimate good, greater than our present 
distress, of an endless adaptation of means to produce an infinite 
harmony of results. The weight of human authority is to-day, 
as ever, in favor of beneficent creation, and this decision sustains 
divine claims. 

Shall we, then, by the help of their discoveries, proceed to 
question nature on the subject of Atheism ? The Bible has said 



10 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

that the atheist is a fool; (not in the sense of being an idiot or 
imbecile, but in that of being mentally befogged, or philosophi- 
cally muddled,) and we are further told to ''answer a fool ac- 
cording to his folly." If this does not mean to refute him out of 
his own mouth, as Jesus so frequently did with the Pharisees, 
to turn his own words against him, to take away your opponent 1 s 
weapon, and cut off his head with it, as David did with Goliath, 
then I know not what it means. It certainly does not mean that 
our own method of speaking should be foolish, or frivolous, or 
ill-adapted. That seems to be forbidden in the succeeding clause 
of the same verse. And I think this view may be further 
strengthened by referring to the method of St. Paul, who, seek- 
ing to convert an intelligent unbeliever in the person of Gov. 
Felix, made no effort to avoid "enticing words of man's wis- 
dom," or to produce "demonstrations of the spirit and its 
power;" but immediately had recourse to reason concerning 
"righteousness, temperance, and judgment." In other words, 
he argued with Felix, with regard to the justice, reasonabless 
and obligations of the moral law, both natural and revealed. 
John Wesley endorsed our method by saying that the law, and 
not the gospel, should be preached to the careless and unawak- 
ened. If such a course is applicable here, certainly much more 
must it apply to the sceptical; and if Mr. Wesley here meant to 
forbid our consulting the natural laws, he must be supposed to 
have meant something which he did not choose to say. Joseph 
Cook says that "till the existence of God and the soul is de- 
monstrated, religious science does not take up the topic of bib- 
lical evidence." — (Biology, p. 258.) 

But without further explanations or endorsements, let us pro- 
ceed to the main discussion. 

What is the origin of Atheism % Prof. John Fiske, in his 
Anthropomosphic Theism, says: "A theory may be shattered 
by refutation; but, in order to demolish it utterly, it must be 
accounted for." Let us see if it is not an easy task to thus com- 
plete the overthrow of agnostic theory. And here let me say, 
that the substitution of the word Agnosticism for Atheism is both 
unwarranted and absurd, a mere trick of those who think by 
discarding an odious name to escape the odium engendered by 
the system it represents, without at all discarding the thing 



ni.STOKY AM) PlliLOflOIMIV <>F ATiii.r.vU. 11 



itself which continues to produce the moral miasma. The word 
Atheism simply means a Godlessism or philosophy, which is 
exactly what agnosticism is, by the testimony of fts teachers. 
What is gained by the change of words is not to be seen, except 
it be to put the decent people of the world to the trouble of snuf- 
fing about until they are able to locate the old nuisance under a 
fresh covering. All hypothesis, all theories, all systems of thought 
are, in an immediate sense, produced by man's intellectual facul- 
ties; but in a more remote and philosophical sense, none of them 
are. The intellect of man is always a servant, never a master. 
While it is concerned in the evolution of all thought, there is ever 
a motive, back of all our intellectual operations, that prompts us 
to effort, and is the inspiring principle of all our actions. It is 
to the emotional, rather than to the mental department of human 
nature, that the real potential causes of all thought and action 
must be referred. Men do not indulge their appetites and lusts 
merely because intellect, in its perverted state, sanctions and 
approbates such conduct, neither do men enter deliberately up 
on a course of martyrdom or self-denial, because philosophically 
the consuquence of such a course may seem to be proven desira- 
ble; but men usually accommodate their courses of reasoning 
to suit that emotional bias peculiar to their natures, so that we 
have scores of thinkers of equal talent on each side of almost 
every vexed question; men differing not at all in intellectual ca- 
pacity, but with widely diferent emotional organizations, as 
witness their daily habits, and prepossessions. Before attempt 
ing to controvert this proposition regarding the supremacy of 
the emotions, try if you can, to imagine men exposing them- 
selves to fatigue and danger in acquiring food, who have no 
sense of hunger; or anxiously seeking wealth, while they have 
# no wants to supply, or end to gain thereby; imagine a Napoleon 
scaling the Alps, as a means of demonstrating the feasibility of 
such a project; or a Howard, spending a life in self-sacrificing 
service to humanity, for the sole purpose of proving to the mind 
that benevolence brings more happiness than selfishness. That 
these are incidental objects, none will deny, but, that they con- 
stitute the prime motive in any of these cases, is a proposition 
too absurd for serious refutation. Behind all theology, lies the 
religious instinct, and behind all scepticism lies the irreligi- 



12 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

ous instinct, and it is in the analysis and verification of these 
instincts that true science is especially concerned. To assert, as 
some have cfone, that Atheism is purely of intellectual origin, is 
like supposing the machinery of state government to be set up 
for the purpose of intellectual amusement. I doubt if men ever, 
either embrace or refuse a call to seek the Lord, from purely in- 
tellectual motives. Religious emotion is as natural to some as 
to eat when hungry, or to drink when athirst; while to other 
natures of equal intellectual endowments, the bare thought of 
piety as applied to themselves seems to be spontaneously re- 
pugnant. The question for us to decide, in the name o true 
science, is, which course is the natural one, which sentiment is 
instinctive, and which is not, regarding man as God made him, 
not as he has made himself. Put this question to a vote, and a 
large majority of the intelligent and truly noble of every age 
will decide the case overwhelmingly in favor of religion. This 
fact proves that religious sentiment is natural to man in his most 
cultivated state. The claim that culture leads to Atheism, is 
most a'bsurd. None but the wilfully ignorant could advance 
such an idea, in view of the Atheism so frequently displayed at 
saloons, biliard halls, gambling-houses and race-courses. Athe- 
ism has built no colleges, placed no jurist on the Supreme bench, 
given laws to no people. Germany is a land of science and 
philosophy. She invites our young men to come to her foun- 
tains of knowledge, and learn there how to delve deeper into the 
labyrinths of scientific investigation, and soar higher in the 
mazes of philosophical inquiry, than they can ever expect to do 
at home. Yet Joseph Cook says that ; 'there is not in Germany 
to-day, except Hackel, a single professor of real eminence who 
teaches philosophical materialism;" (Biology, p. 157,) and Prof. 
Christlieb of Bonn, while addressing a meeting in Edinburgh in 
1881, affirmed what Frothingham soon after reluctantly confess- 
ed in New York, that Evangelical Christianity is stronger in 
Germany, despite the boasts of sceptics, than it has been at any 
preceding period of the present century. German thought, from 
palace to hovel, is governed and moulded by her Kauts, her 
Fichtes, her Goethes, and Lotzes, not by the sceptics, conspicu- 
ous for their rarity alone. Prof. Wholuck told Joseph Cook, 
that in Germany a man's educrtion was considered defective, if 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATIIKHM. ]'.) 



iie leaned to Materialism. You will get a correct idea of t lie- 
philosophical connection existing between Materialism and 
Atheism by recalling to mind the memory of the Siamese twins. 
The one pair physically, the other metaphysically, inseparable, 
death inevitably results from their disunion. Bear this illustra- 
tion in mind, and you will find use for it in the Wither develop- 
ments of our subject. 

There are but two sources of knowledge — Nature and Reve- 
lation. It is very evident that neither the doctrine nor the sen- 
timent of Atheism could have come by revelation, since it not 
only denies the fact of revelation, but absolutely spiirns the 
notion that any Being exists who could give us a revelation. 
From nature, Atheism could not come, in the sense of a creative 
endowment, since the existence of a Creator is denied. The in- 
tellectual causes of Atheism are very apparent. Satan, who is 
more shrewd and diplomatic than Voltaire, Tallyrand, and all 
the world besides, often helps men to make mistakes of judgment. 
But whence the sentiment that prompts men to set their intellects 
at work to disprove the existence of a Deity \ Whence the de- 
sire to have no God \ Rightly constituted men and women can- 
not help believing in a God, however much they may feel a de- 
sire to do away with the idea that there is one who enacts right- 
eous laws, and punishes (heir infraction. Even wicked men, in 
spite of their wickedness, believe and tremble; but the Atheist, 
on the contrary, appears to find something ridiculous in the no- 
tion of man's dependence upon, and responsibility to, his God. 
Undoubtedly, men may be instructed into a state where all the 
natural bias of the mind is opposed to religious belief and prac- 
tice. In other words, men may have an irreligious, as well as a 
religious bias. But, while the one may exist as a fundamental 
faculty of the mind, and therefore a gift from God, the other 
cannot arise except it be by chance, and therefore proves noth- 
ing for or against the existence of God; and, should there be no 
God, his non-existence would have to be proved by other con- 
siderations. If it be natural for man to possess all his faculties 
by chance, as the Atheist affirms, then there can be no such thing 
as order or harmony in nature, such as we know there is; but if 
man's faculties came by design, then the religious instinct is 
fundamental and organic, since it pertains to the characters of 



34 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

all the human race, with some very insignificant exceptions; 
and the sentiment or instinct of Atheism, must therefore be un- 
natural, must result from the absence or deficiency of some 
proper and God-given instinct. According to the Christian idea, 
which holds strongly to nature as the work of God, and there- 
fore perfect in its adaptations, the Atheist is out of harmony 
with nature, which requires an even, harmonious development 
of all the faculties. It is very evident therefore, that all axi- 
omatic truth, which is founded on pure reason, and deduced 
from a consideration of the mind and its operations, must of 
consequence oppose the doctrine of Atheism, and demonstrate 
its fallacy, because the first principles of Atheism are in contra- 
diction to the known constitution of the mind. It might easily 
be also demonstrated that all forms of irreligion are violations 
of man's nature, which is constituted with especial reference to 
religious objects. But we must next allude to a subdivision of 
the argument from nature, viz: the evidence of the physical 
senses. It is here alone that materialistic arguments appear to a 
good advantage, and seem to some minds to possess primary 
importance; yet, even here, they are delusive, for a mere super- 
ficial acquaintance with the habits of matter, without any 
knowledge of its origin or nature, can never lead us to a perfect 
understanding of the laws of mind. Prof. Draper says explicitly 
of the Greek sceptical philosophy, that "in all its investigations 
the starting point had been material conceptions, depending on 
the impressions or information of the senses; 1 ' yet "within a* 
single century Greek philosophy had come to the pass of intel- 
lectual despair." (Int. 1>. of Europe p. 162.) He is also very 
plain in asserting that "at a very early period in philosophy 
the senses were detected as being altogether unreliable "as a 
guide to universal, absolute truth. (Idem p. 171.) Yet "man 
is so constituted that he cannot live for any length of time with- 
out a form of religious worship." (P. 192.) Is it not passing 
strange that men will stop their ears from hearing the loving 
tones of a holy God speaking to them through his word; turn 
their backs upon the testimony of their fellow-men; continue to 
so act as to deride the highest and noblest feelings of human 
nature; go into hysterics over the discovery of some fanciful 
Bathybius; leap with extasy at some suggestion regarding the 



IIISTOKY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 15 



character of a little shapeless microscopic mass known as a 
moneron; and yet stoutly maintain that there is no Devil who 
ever leads persons astray \ Notwithstanding Atheists profess 
to derive their belief solely from the teachings of nature, 
nothing can be more unnatural than their logic. It certainly 
cannot be the nature of rocks and mud to grow up into men and 
women. Why is not the wmole earth intelligent, if it is accord- 
ing to its nature to produce intelligence? The slime at the bot- 
tom of the ocean, called Bathybius, never speaks, thinks, or acts 
intelligently, yet the}^ tell us it has in itself the power to grow 
up into intelligent beings. How can it transmit qualities it never 
possessed \ They also tell us that nature gave us our faculties. 
Think of a clod of earth or a clapboard (outside of the parental 
relation) teaching a person to be wise ! Think of a rattlesnake 
teaching a man to be charitable ! Think of a mud turtle, locust 
or tree-toad causing one to love music ! They might by contrast, 
if the faculty were already supplied. Think of a parent that 
neither knows or appreciates her own qualities, giving the fac- 
ulties of consciousness, ideality, &c. to her children ! And then, 
they tell lis there is no chance work about it either. Everything 
conies by necessity. And wdiat kind of necessity \ That kind 
which depends on the character of a moneron or beetle ! Just 
think of it! That immortal poem, Paradise Lost, must have 
come down to us from a grub-worm; for does not Prof. Tyndall 
say that he can discern in the original fiery vapor out of which 
the world was made, the promise and potency of all life and 
motion? and does he not also tell us that not only heat, light, 
and magnetism, but even thought itself is only a mode of mo- 
tion ? So, if all the promises and potencies can be traced back 
to the original star-dust, they must have existed still more per- 
fectly in the grub worm. Think of a tadpole having, wrapped 
up in its little frame, the promise and potency of all those 
exquisite poems of Homer and Yirgil, Shakespeare's plays. 
Pope's Essay on Man, Newton's Principia, The Declaration of 
Independence, and even Prof. St. George Mivart' s Essay on the 
Frog ! What a long-headed creature, to be sure, thus to provide, 
ages ahead, for its own literary immortality ! The absurdities of 
Atheism are altogether too many to enumerate. They virtually 
destroy all science, for what knowledge can we have of that 



16 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

which operates by chance % Ingersoll says there is no chance- 
work in Materialism; but. if he were to consult Webster's Una- 
bridged Dictionary, he would find that chance work is that 
which occurs without forethought or design, — the very elements 
every Materilist is fighting and denying. It is no trouble at all 
to whip an Atheist with a Dictionary; and, for some of them, I 
think a spelling-book would be sufficient. 

Now, if the faculties of man came by chance, or without fore- 
thought, if you please, how does it happen that the organ . of 
worship is the only one that does not relate to some external 
fact or object ! Man is very well organized with reference to his 
surroundings, if nature had only not made the grand mistake of 
making him a worshipping creature when there was nothing to 
worship ! 

Suppose we take up a little of the History of Atheism. Sir 
John Lubbock, who is a strong supporter of evolution, in his 
work on 'The Origin of Civilization, and The Primitive Condi- 
tion of Man, 1 ' tells us (p. 119) that religion, like everything else, 
undergoes a process, of evolution, and that the first and lowest 
state of the human race is a state of "Atheism; understanding 
by this term, not a denial of the existence of a deity, but an ab- 
sence of any definite ideas on the subject." Undoubtedly the 
Baronet is correct in asserting that Atheism is the lowest state 
in which humanity is found, but there is not the least shadow 
of proof that such a state was the primitive one. We notice that 
these lowest savages are as far advanced in religious philosophy 
as any of our modern agnostic scientists. They do not deny the 
existence of God, because they have not intelligence enough. 
The}^ simply say, we know nothing of God; we have no idea of 
what you mean. And what says Bradlaugh? I quote from a 
pamphlet called, "Is There a God," by Chas. Bradlaugh. He 
says, "The Atheist does not say 'there is no God,' but he says 'I 
know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God.' ' 
Can anything be more ridiculous than the invitation which the 
Atheist extends to us to embrace the same opinions held by the 
lowest savages % If their Atheism be not responsible, as we be- 
lieve, for their degradation, it has at least failed to raise them to 
the high state occupied by many religious communities. Sir J. 
Lubbock says especially of the native Australians, (pp. 158, 159,) 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF A'l'i! K1S >f. M 



"These people have no idea of a Supreme Being." Has BracU 
laugh borrowed his belief from the Australian, or has the latter 
borrowed from such teachers as Bradlaugh in the remote past \ 
"They do not believe in the immortality of the soul," says Sir 
John, which brings to our minds the Siamese twins of theology, 
spoking of awhile ago. "JTor is morality in any way connect- 
ed with their religion, if it can be so called. The words 'good' 
or 'bad' had reference to taste or bodily comfort, and did not 
convey any idea of right and wrong." So we see that the same 
people who had no idea of God, and a future life, were also des- 
titute of any ideas of right and wrong. The same correspond- 
ence between religious and moral obtuseness may be observed 
in the history of ancient enlightened Greece and Rome. Can it 
be possible that these people once had teachers who said to 
them, as Epicurus said to his followers, seek sensual enjoyment 
as the end of your existence; or, as Carneades declared, right 
and wrong cannot be distinguished from each other; or, as Tyn- 
dall said to the laborers of England, "You commit crime simply 
because you cannot help 3'ourselves; we punish you because we 
cannot help ourselves V Or, perhaps, they followed such teach- 
ers as David Hume, who taught that every appetite and passion 
should be gratified if it can be done within the limits of state 
enactments; or Ingersoli, who teaches that parents have no 
business to try to govern their children, and God no right to 
punish us. And perhaps some of their teachers may have led 
such lives as Voltaire, Roussou and Paine did. If so, we can- 
not w r onder that they have lost all sense of moral responsibility. 
Lubbock also includes among the Atheistic tribes, the aborigi- 
nes of California, who, he says, (p. 160,) "Had no magistrates, 
no police, and no laws. Idols, temples, religious worship or 
ceremonies, were unknown to them. *■-■** Every one did as 
he pleased, and all vices and misdeeds remained unpunished. 
* * * The Californians lived as though they had been free- 
thinkers and materialists. * * * Their language has no 
words for 'God' and 'soul'." The Baronet here describes an 
Atheistic community to perfection. No God, no soul, no church, 
no laws, no government. Plenty of vice and cruelty, but no 
punishment. Infidels have always argued against punishing 
anybody for wrong-doing. Most of them, like Robespierre, 



13 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

strenuously oppose capital punishment; and, while he at last 
suffered its penalty, it is to be feared that many of them are re- 
served to a worse end, even "the vengeance of eternal fire." 
Even God, says the infidel, has no right to inflict punishment, 
for the wrong doer cannot help himself. He was born with this 
or that propensity, which compels Jiim to sin, and he cannot 
avoid it. And this, too, in the teeth of Ingersoll's admission, in 
eulogizing Humboldt, that all truly great men are such in spite 
of adverse circumstances. Some of these circumstances are 
known to extend to the cerebral organization, for great men 
were proverbially dull boys. I have always wondered why in- 
fidels are so opposed to the doctrine of depravity, unlees they 
wish to make a few exceptions about home. They seem to have 
about as poor an opinion of the natural state of the human mind 
and heart as Christians can possibly have, the only difference 
being in this, that they believe this depraved and vicious state is 
an eternal necessity, having been decreed by an ancient moneron, 
who cannot now be resurrected to reverse the decree. If they 
would only admit the plain scientific fact that trndr stolid in- 
difference is a better proof of depravity than the religious enthu- 
siasm they so bemoan, there might be some hope for them. The 
Kaffirs, the Zulus, and several other tribes are also included in 
the list of savage agnostics, over whom, Lubbock saj^s, "The 
fetichism of the Negro is a decided step in advance." Burton, 
the great explorer, also declares that "Atheism is the natural 
condition of the savage and uninstructed mind, the night of 
spiritual existence." (Or. of Cio. p. 123.') "It is evident, says M. 
Bick, "that the Arafuras of Vorkay possess no religion whatever; 
* * * of the immortality of the soul they have not the least 
conception. * * * Their idea was, when you are dead, there 
is an end of you." (Or. of Cio. p. 122.) Some of the savage 
tribes have a philosophy that might well be call Ingersollism. 
Ingersoll declares that, if there is a God, nature proves Him to 
be a monster. Speaking of some of the divine commands, he 
asks, "Who could worship such a fiend?" The Eastern Ne- 
groes, when spoken to by Burton about God, "eagerly asked 
where He was to be found, that they might kill him." Inger- 
soll, over the grave of his brother, said, "Life is a narrow vale 
between the barren peaks of two eternities." The only answer 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATIIKISM. ] {) 



to man's prayers and longings after immortality, he tells us, 'is 
, the echo of bis wailing cry.' 1 tA He is finished 1 .^— is the East 
African's last .word concerning parent or friend, "All is done 
forever," sing the West Africans. How like the funeral dirge 
Of Atheism in Illinois and Africa ! When Moffat endeavor* d 
to explain to a chief about God, he exclaimed, fc4 Would that I 
could catch it, I would transfix it with my spear." (Or. of Cio. 
]). 163.) Henry C. Wright, the infidel, says of any God whose 
laws demand capital punishment for crime : ct Kill the God, let 
the man live." Ingersoll says, "Nature embraces with infinite 
arms all matter and all force," and "a God outside of nuture 
exists in nothing, and is nothing." Mr. Artus relates of the 
West Coast Negroes, that "there was no persuading them that 
any earthly blessings came from God. They said the earth, and 
not God, gave them gold, which they had to dig out of its 
bowels; that the earth also yielded them maize and rice, and 
that not without the help of their own labor; that for fruits they 
were obliged to the Portuguese, who planted the trees; that 
their cattle brought them young, and the sea furnished them 
with fish; * * * so they could not see how they were oblig- 
ed to God for any of these benefits." (Or. of Cio. p. 131.) 

Ingersoll asks how a benevolent deity can be supposed to 
create hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and miasmas \ The 
Eastern Negro propounds the equally grave philosophical ques 
tion: "Who but your God, then, lays waste our homes and 
kills our wives and cattle?" 

Ingersoll says he could have suggested improvements had he 
b3en present at the creation. He would have made good health 
catching instead of disease. The inhabitants of Kamskatka, 
according to Kotseboe, are equally smart. They say, \ 'If God 
had not been so stupid, would he have made inaccessible rocks, 
and too rapid rivers?" (Or. of Cio. p. 134.) 

We see, then, that it is Infidel, not Christian, teachers, who 
are striving to pull the human race back into barbarism. They 
present us with the doctrines of savages and devil- (demon) -wor- 
shippers, expecting to see us embrace them with open arms. 
Could imbecility go farther? 

If Scepticism has made the savages what they are, let us 
thank God for Religion. If, as infidels say, there is the primi- 



20 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

tive faith, let us not take the sure infidel road back to it, We 
should maintain our present advantage, according to the princi- 
ples of that endless progression so much talked about, and not 
be ensnared by a fallacy too transparent to deceive even a child; 
for Athens, Rome, Paris, and Africa, will not soon be forgotten, 
or their literary monuments ignored. 



"*?a«^^ 




HISTORY AM) PHILOSOPHY OF A Til K1SM. 21 



LECTURE II. 

BOODflISM THE STAKT OF PHILOSOPHICAL ATHEISM - -SlN AM) DOUBT EX- 
ISTED prom the Beginning. 

''Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of 
Israel: for the Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make them 
swords or spears : but all the Israelites went down to the Philis- 
tines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his 
axe. and his mattock. Yet they had a tile for the mattocks, 
and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to 
sharpen the goods. So it came to pass in the day of battle, that 
there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of 
the people that were with Saul and <?ohnathan: but with Saul 
and with Johuatlian his son was there found.*' — I Samuel, xiii : 
19-22. 

Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, I). D., in commenting on the above 
text, says: k -These Israelites might again and again have ob- 
tained a supply of swords and weapons, as for instance when they 
took the spoils of the Ammonites; but these Israelites seemed 
content to have no swords, no spears, no blacksmiths, no grind- 
stones, no active iron mines, until it was too late for them to make 
any resistance. I see the farmers tugging along with their pick- 
axes and plows, and I say: 'Where are you going with those 
things V They say : w Oh, we are going over to the garrison of 
the Philistines to get these things sharpened.' I say : 'You 
foolish men, why don't you sharpen them at home V 'Oh,' they 
say, 'the Blacksmith's shops are all torn down, and we have 
nothing left us but a file.' So it is in the church of Christ to- 
day. We are too Avilling to give up our weapons to the enemy. 
The world boasts that it has gobbled up the schools, and the 
colleges, and 'the arts, and- the sciences, and the literature, and 
the printing-press. Infidelity is making a mighty attempt to 
get all our weapons in its hand, and then to keep them. You 
know it is making this boast all the time ; and after a while, 
when the great battle between sin and righteousness has opened, 
if we do not look out we will be as badly off as these Israelites, 
without any swords to fight with, and without any sharpening 



22 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

instruments. What we want is scientific Christians to capture 
the science, and scholastic Christians to capture the scholarship, 
and philosophic Christians to capture the philosophy, and lec- 
turing Christians to take back the lecturing platform. * ■ * f 
Oh, church of God, go out and recapture these weapons." (The 
Masque torn off, p. 384, &c.) 

To the above we may add the following remarks by that justly 
celebrated author and Christian scientist, Thomas Dick, L. L. 
D. While confidently affirming that "it is in the sacred oracles 
alone that the will of God, the natural character of man, the 
remedy for moral evil, the rules of moral conduct and the means 
of moral improvement are clearly and fully unfolded ; the learn- 
ed writer is nevertheless so alive to the dangers, and even the 
impiety of limiting our aspirations to the acquirement of scrip- 
tural knowledge only, that *he thus discourses : "It is foretold 
in the sacred oracles that men shall speak of the might of God's 
terrible acts; that his saints shall speak of the glory of his king- 
dom, and talk of his power to make known to the sons of men 
his mighty operations, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. 

"This prediction has never yet been fulfilled in reference to the 
great body of the Christian church. For, where do we find one oat 
of twenty among the hearers of the gospel, capable of rehears- 
ing the 'terrible acts' of God, either in his moral or his physical 
operations — of tracing the dispensations of his providence 
towards nations and communities, in a connected series, from 
the commencement of time through the successive periods of his- 
tory — and of comparing the desolation of cities and the ruin of 
empires with the declarations of ancient prophecy % Where do 
we find one out of a hundred capable of expatiating on the 
'power' of Jehovah, and on the most striking displays of his per- 
fection which are exhibited throughout the vast creation? Or 
where shall we find those who are qualified to display the magnif- 
icence of that empire which is established in the heavens, em- 
bracing within its boundaries thousands of suns and ten thous- 
ands of worlds % * ■* ■ *' We should behold our preachers ex- 
plaining the principles of religion with such clearness and ener- 
gy, that they should seldom need to recur to the subject, * * 
displaying the majesty and supremacy of God in the operations 
of his moral government among the nations, descanting on his 



HISTORY AND IMII LOSOIMI V OF ATIIKI'SM. 23 

glorious attributes, exhibiting his wisdom in the arrangements 
of nature and the movements of his providence, illustrating his 
omnipotence and grandeur from the glories of the firmament, 
directing their hearers to the contemplation of the works of his 
hands." (Improvement of Society, pp. 321, 322.) The same 
writer affirms that the general diffusion of such scientific and 
historical knowledge ''would be productive of an increase of 
moral order, and an improvement in moral conduct," because 
"every action that is truly virtuous is founded on knowledge." 
understanding the term virtue to mean "Christian morality, or 
that holiness which the Scriptures enjoin." (pp. 242, 244.) And 
for fear lest the above statements might prove insufficient, Dr. 
Dick again says that, "in order to acquire a just and compre- 
hensive conception of the perfections of Deity, we must contem- 
plate his character as displayed both in the system of Revelation 
and in the system of Nature, otherwise we can acquire only a 
partial and distorted view of the attributes of Jehovah. The 
Scriptures alone, without the medium of his works, cannot con 
vey to us the most sublime conceptions of the magnificence of his 
empire, and his eternal power and God-head. * * * The 
Scriptures declare, that as 'the w T orks of Jehovah are great,' they 
must be 'sought out,' or thoroughly investigated by those w T ho 
hav^ pleasure therein; and a threatening is denounced against 
ev\ y one who 'disregards the works of the Lord,' and 'neglects 
to consider the operations of his hand.' " 

In continuation of the thought of the first part of last even- 
ing's discourse, and also of the above quotations, w^e may re- 
mark that to a mind transfigured by the ennobling and enkind- 
ling harmony of science and Religion, those constraints which 
ignorance and bigotry would impose to limit man's vision to 
narrow and dingy avenues, must ever seem puerile. The scrip- 
ture writers refer almost constantly to nature for proofs and illus- 
trations, which is the highest possible indorsement of such plans 
of argument. Most of those who have undertaken the work of 
disseminating throughout the world a knowledge of the divine 
plans for human salvation from the evils of this evil world, have 
not had the opportunity, or have not seen fit to prepare their 
minds to answer those objections which warped intellects and 
disobedient hearts, strengthened in their evil ways by an adroit 



24 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

but serpentine philosophy, are ever making to the rough, rocky, 
and thorn -hedged path which leads to eternal glory. 

This neglect is to "be deprecated, if not condemned. In every 
great conflict, the followers of God have been compelled to seize 
their own rightful weapons from their thieving adversaries. It 
was thus that Benaiah acquired his warlike reputation, thus 
David slew the Philistine, thus Christ refuted the Saducees. 

When I look upon the exceeding great importance of those 
subblime teachings which are calculated to make us wise unto 
salvation, which oppose the spread of all sin, delusions, and 
misery, and which not only propose to, but actually succeed in 
elevating man through the pathway of purity and holiness, I 
can conceive of but one rational inquiry as to the manner of 
convincing men of their truth, and that is, which is the best, the 
most effectual way % 

The Deism of the eighteenth century Avas met upon its own 
ground by such men as Butler, Watson, Leslie, &c. ; and igno- 
rance of the sweeping victories which they won has alone pre- 
vented the very few remaining traces of Deism among the un- 
learned from being swept away in the common ruin which fell 
on the short-lived cause. The result to the church was the de- 
velopment of natural theology as now taught in all our colleges 
and seminaries. The camps of the Deists were broken up and 
their forces put to flight b}^ men who had donned the whole ar- 
mor of the Christian warrior, not neglecting to u add to their 
faith knowledge ;" and who firmly believed that so wise a Being 
as the Father of Spirits never made a world whose course of con- 
duct would condemn the wisdom or beneficence of its creator. 
What they accomplished in their conflicts with Deism, we may 
likewise succeed in doing in these perilous times with Atheism 
and all its illusive sophistry, for "there is no knowledge, nor 
wisdom, nor understanding that is against the Lord. 1 ' 

We do not, of course, believe that all theological and meta- 
physical questions are to be tested by human reason alone. 
Snch an admission would be fatal to the opinion so well-ground- 
ed and so universally believed, that there is a definite 'limit to 
the human understanding. The Sceptics themselves, as we shall 
presently see, have been X\\e very foremost to declare that we 
have, outride of revelation, no criterion of truth: that we can 



HISTOIJY AND PHILOSOPHY OF A.TIIEl83f. ZPi 



only conjecture in regard to what things are true and what 
false, what is right and what is wrong, but can never know. 
Cicero admitted that the will of God was the true criterion, but 
denied the possibility of ascertaining what the will of God might 
be without a revelation, because the human faculties had become 
so distorted from their natural functions as to be wholly incom- 
petent judges of nature's teachings. (Watson's Institutes, vol. 
1, pp. 45, 46.) Socrates and Plato oflirmed that not only relig 
ions and moral ideas, but virtuous conduct, must be by divine 
inspiration, since no course of reasoning was sufficient to demon- 
strate from nature, 1he usefulness of virtue (Calvinistic Library, 
p. 15.) Y< t there are some foolish persons, even in this enlight- 
ened age, who would subject the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the 
miraculous conception, the new birth, and many other questions 
of like intricacy to the decision of that carnal mind which is at 
enmity against God, because too much in love with sin to submit 
to His holy law. Yet, in science, or philosophy, they will readily 
admit that reason cannot guide us to the bottom of any subject. 
As Dr. Spurzhein w r ell says, "our knowledge is purely phe- 
nomenal; we cannot know the essence of anything.'' 

Such theological questions as the above are like the scientific 
questions relating to the origin of matter, the nature of substance, 
the efficient cause or causes of thought and feeling, &c, which 
Tyndall and others have admitted to be inexplicable, and be- 
yond the domain of reason and investigation. Human reason 
must of necessity be falli ble in some things, and measurably 
uncertain in many things, because no single finite mind can 
grasp and hold all the facts, or rightly weigh all the probabili- 
ties that cluster around any investigation into the Nature, plans 
and methods of an ommiscient and omnipotent Being. The 
child cannot comprehend all the reasons governing the actions 
of a parent; so, neither can a grown up child of God know all 
the secrets of His character and purposes, especially if they 
have never studied his manner of working, or ever received any 
direct communications of his mind. 

An instance of this is to be found in Prof. John Fiske's "An- 
thropomorphic Theism," where he most confidently assumes 
that a new definition of law is needed to apply to the laws of 
nature, which laws he assumes to indicate merely the "order of 



26 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

sequence among certain phenomena,", and not, like all other 
laws, to constitute an "expression of the will of a superior." 
Here, as every where else, our conjectures regarding the unknown 
should be guided by known principles. 

' 'Say, first, of God above or man below, 
What can we reason but from what we know?" 

All fathomable laws are known to emanate from the intelli- 
gent will of a superior being. How then can we reasonably 
presume the Opposite state of things to exist in the realms of the 
unknown? Another instance, equally glaring, may be found in 
the same author, where he asserts that there can be no Supreme 
Intelligence, because, if it exists at all, it must like human intel- 
ligence, be a product of environment. This is assuming, with- 
out a particle of proof, that environments of themselves produce 
intellectual development. But, if so, they should make every- 
thing, even clods of earth, intelligent. 

Such weak sophistry results from attempting to make reason 
the sole judge of things beyond its ken; despising revelation, 
yet trying with assumption to bridge a chasm which nothing but 
Gfod's word can span. But, as the foolishness of the child can- 
not set at naught the authority of its earthly parent, so neither 
can the imbecility of man annihilate any of the purposes of Grod. 
i 'In pride, in reasoning pride our error lies; 
Men quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. ' ' 

The parental relations of God to man must indeed be allowed 
full weight in favor of the theistic side of the argument, or all 
controversy would be entirely useless; since, to adopt premises 
exactly the opppsite, as some sceptics illogically as well as sac 
religiously do, is to prejudge the case in their own favor before 
hearing the argument. 

Every hypothesis is of right entitled to be exhibited in the 
light of its own premises, and in this light the silence of sceptics 
proves Theism to be invulnerable. To make this plain to eveiy 
one, take the following legal case : two men brought suit again t 
each other for assault. The question depended on which was 
the aggressor. In the hearing of the case, each party was per- 
mitted to declare the other party the aggressor, and to produce 
testimony to sustain his allegations. After all the evidence was 
in, the credibility of the parties, their behavior upon the witness 
stand, &c, was permitted to decide the case, the evidence being 



HISTORY AM) PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 2/ 

equal. But suppose that the testimony oteitfter party had been 
first received and then ordered to be considered in the light of 
the premises of the opposite party, which affirmed the guilt of 
the witness, is it not evident that no fair trial could be had \ 
So, if we were to proceed upon the assumption that the Framer 
of Worlds is to be judged as though we could understand him, 
and condemned as though he were finite, we might as well be 
put into the arena of mortal combat with our arms and legs tied. 

Such will be our po ition and claims whenever we begin to 
discuss the doctrines of religion. In the meantime, we grant the 
Atheist or Agnostic his premises, until lie can be shown to 
have himself overturned them. 

Another important thought in connection with the preliminary 
discussion of this subject, and another reason for insisting on the 
propriety of such discussion, is that, according to the best au- 
thority we have, based on scripture, reason, and a church tradi- 
tion so ancient that the memory of man runneth not to the con- 
trary, the crime against the Holy Ghost, which hath forgiveness 
neither in this world nor in the world to come, can be nothing 
more nor less than Atheism; by which term we mean, not simply 
an intellectual incapacity for comprehending certain doctrines of 
scripture, but a wilful rejection of substantial proof, and a set- 
tled acquiescence in the conclusions growing out of such wilful 
ignorance. There can be no possible doubt that the tendency 
of modern atheistic thought is to deny to scripture evidence and 
testimony, as Well as to church traditions, that proper degree of 
weight which naturally belongs to human testimony, and which 
the unbiased mind instinctively accords to reasonable evidence. 
Such conduct on the part of the modern scoffer indicates the 
possession of a mind and heart that rests from choice in the bleak 
and howling wilderness of infidelity, and for such there is no 
possible absolution from sin and death, neither in this world 
nor in the world to come. How patiently and assiduously we 
ought therefore to labor for those w T ho have not yet reached this 
fatal extremity ! 

In the infancy of the human race, neither the existence nor the 
omnipotence of God was ever questioned; His justice and mercy 
might alone be disputed by the disobedient, who suffered, as 
they thought unjustly, for their crimes. For twenty-five hund- 



28 HIST0KY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

red years, there is not a scrap of written history or trustworthy 
tradition to show that any person, whether intelligent or unin- 
telligent, learned or unlearned, ever undertook so rash an act as 
to dispute the universal belief of a God who sitteth in the circle 
of the heavens, and presides over the majestic operations of the 
universe. At the time when the book of Job was written, (1520 
B. C.) not a single intelligent teacher of Atheism had yet appear- 
ed. India, the future home of Boodha, had never yet heard it 
intimated that there might not be any Maker of Worlds, any 
Father of Spirits. Ignorance, pride, and disobedience had be- 
come prevalent, and had exercised their share of influence in 
degrading the inhabitants of the world into idolarty of various 
kinds, but the last link in the golden chain of faith which binds 
the soul to its God had not yet been wholly sundered, neither 
had those original notions of the providential care of heaven over 
those on earth w T ho sometimes look up thereto with filial emotions, 
been wholly obliterated. We find at present only a very few 
tribes so low as to have no rememberance of original theistic 
ideas; and even those few tribes have, in most cases, some cus- 
tom or ill-defined notion w T hich points back to more definite 
ideas in the remote ancestry. This fact will be more evident in 
the subsequent lectures. Had there been a ny controversy in the 
preceding ages upon so important a question, some scrap of his- 
tory, — some fragment of tradition, or some monument in sculp- 
ture, would certainly have preserved it for our benefit; but the 
absence of such proof, notwithstanding the philosopic culture 
which then flourished in Egypt and India, prove beyond the 
possibility of a doubt that the shadows of a primitive knowledge 
concerning the Almighty himself yet lingered about the homes 
of the least degraded of the human race, and continued to awe 
their minds into revernce for the faith of their fathers, if it did 
not entirely succeed in warming them into obedience. 

Draper, the historian, informs us that "at the period when we 
first encounter the Hindoo mind, historically or philologically," 
which cannot be far distant either way from the period of Job, 
% 'they were settling to their own satisfaction problems requiring 
a cultivated intellect even so much as to propose," (Intel. Devel. 
of Europe, p. 25;) yet it was not until nearly a thousand years 
after, that Gotama Boodha first began to incorporate a genuine 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 23 



atheistic sentiment and bias to the Asiatic philosophy. And, 
even at that time, so cautious was this teacher of the Hindoos, 
that only the more metaphysically inclined among his followers 
were able immediately to discover the undeniable tendency of 
his doctrines to end in Atheism. 

Among the Greeks, however, where the Boodhistic philosophy 
almost at once began to be disseminated, the same religious re- 
straints did not exist. The Greek population was made up of 
conflicting elements of different rationalities, which by their 
strife had already begun to develop a spirit of inquiry, out of 
which might then be dimly seen the vision of decay in their 
polytheistic faith. There was also a vigor in the Greek mind, 
which, unlike the Asiatic, impelled them to hurry all'philosophy 
on to its practical conclusions. Thus, the seed of Atheism, once 
planted in a soil at once so intellectually fertile and so religious- 
ly barren, grew so rapidly as to soon cast its Asiatic cotempora- 
ry utterly in the shade. While the Hindoos and Chinese, in 
their stolid indifference have continued in undisturbed, homoge- 
nius tranquility, dreaming their narcotic dream of ease and help- 
less fatality, gradually but insensibly losing every trace of their 
pristine intellectuality, the more active Greeks seized immedi- 
ately upon the vital elements of that terrible belief, and dashed 
on to a ruin so sudden, so magnificent in its superficial appear- 
ance, yet so appalling in its moral results, as to startle the world. 
Such were the lirst results of philosophical scepticism. 

As to the date of Boodha, a great difference of opinion has 
until quite recently prevailed, some placing it 400 years B. C, 
while others have contended for a thousand years or more. 
Even his followers themselves disagree to the extent of more 
than a thousand years in describing the period of his advent. 
(See Bennett's Sages, &c, p. 40.) While several authorities 
were at first inclined to concede to Boodha an antiquity of at 
least 1,000 years B. C, the tendency of later investigation has 
been, to shorten these figures nearly one-half, placing him as a 
co temporary of Socrates and Democritus. It is generally ad- 
mitted that Menu, Hindoostan's most ancient lawgiver, lived 
near the dawn of their civilization. D. M. Bennett, the Atheist, 
declares that Menu's "history reaches farther back into antiqui- 
ty than any lawgiver known to the world." He should have 



30 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

said the heathen world, for Moses lived at least 500 years earlier. 
Draper on the contrary, though an infidel, is more consistent in 
his views, and more accurate also in his dates, affirming that 
"the Institutes * * were written about the ninth century be- 
fore Christy" (Int. D. of Europe, p. 46,) which would make 
Menu nearly cotemporaneous with the prophet Isaiah. It was 
to reform the doctrines of Menu and the Vedas from the corrup- 
tions which had then crept in, that Gotama Boodha gave the 
best energies of his life; but, while he succeeded in banishing 
much of the superstition of his time, and placing the religion of 
India upon a more speciously moral basis, he also succeeded in 
planting a more noxious weed than the one which he sought to 
exterminate. 

Draper, in defence to certain obsolete authorities, grants Go- 
tama to have lived in the tenth century before Christ, which in- 
volves him in the absurdity of supposing the Reformer to have 
lived before the beginning of that degradation in religion which 
he undertook to reform, for the historian himself speaks of the 
corruptions of Brahminism as occurring mainly if not altogether 
subsequent to the enactment of the Menu code of laws. (See 
Intellectual Developement of Europe, pp. 46, 47.) "The Avars, 
Siamese,, and Cingalese, all fix him (Boodha,) B. C. 600," which' 
is, in all probability, the utmost limit we can assign, consistent- 
ly with truth. It is true that D. M. Bennett, in his book on the 
World's Sages, Infidels and Thinkers, stretches out these figures 
immensely, making Boodha to have lived more than a thousand 
years B. C, (as the more remote and boastful Chinese assert,) 
and the sacred books of India to be over 4,000 y« ars old; but 
later researches than any he quotes, especially those of Prof. 
Geo. Hawlinson of Oxford, Eng., have entirely brushed aw \y 
the cobwebs which ignorance has built on conjecture, and have 
demonstrated the worthless character of all the evidences hither- 
to relied upon by the worshippers of the heathen, to prove the 
immense antiquity of their demi-gods. Prof. Rawiinson begins 
the Indian and Greek civilizations cotemporaneously with the 
period 1,200 B. C, which allows about three hundred years from 
the first rudiments of Yedaic literature to the time of Menu in 
India and Hesiod and Homer in Greece. It is well known to 
every reader of ancient history that the theological ideas and the 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 'M 

philosophical plane of thought of India at the time of Menu, 
and Grreece in the time of Hornet, run almost perfectly parallell, 
tie 4 slight difference depending wholly on the polytheistic influ- 
ence of the northern tribes on the Greek nation. After the peri- 
od of Homer, and especially at the time of Socrates, the corres- 
pondence is still more perfect; while, a few centuries later, there 
is a strong divergence in Greece under the influence of the Scep- 
tics, and the civilization of that country hastens to its ruin, while 
that of India follows on more slowly. 

The philosophical character of theBoodhistic religion, its high 
moral status, and the peaceful manner of its propagation, make 
its doctrines more interesting to us than those of any later human 
production. It is admitted by all that Boodhism at the present 
day is Atheistic, but that it was so originally has been ch nied. 
The Duke of Argyll affirms that the Boodha was metaphysical 
and not an irreligious Atheism, which is the same thing as to say 
it was deceptive, holding the faith of the ignorant by an outward 
glamour of pious motive, while to the student it revealed itself 
as a blank negation of all religious truth. Draper says plainly, 
''the fundamental principle of Boodhism is that there is a su- 
preme power, but no Supreme Being; * * no self-existent, 
eternal, personal God. * * * Since he has no God, the 
Boodhist cannot expect absorption. * * * TheBoodhisthas 
no religion, but only a ceremonial. How can there be a religion 
where there is no God ?" While Boodha tacitly permitted his 
followers to retain their form of religion, he plainly told the fav- 
ored and elect ones that the 'God they worshiped was a thing of 
the imagination, and hinted to the church at large that God was 
only a product of a previous grand scheme of evolution, and 
would finally be again absorbed by the forces of the universe. 
That D. M. Bennett should not lay claim to Boodha as an Athe- 
ist, while loudly exulting over the Atheistical Carneades, is en- 
tirely owing to the superficial character of his investigations. 

Boodhism largely influenced the middle and latter periods of 
Greek philosophy, as Brahminism did the earlier periods, but 
there were in it no seeds calculated to preserve the moral vigor 
of a nation. On the contrary, it proved itself to be a carrosive 
element, which, by undermining all faith in a Divine Being, by 
sapping the foundation of moral responsibility, and by finally 



32 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

dethroning intellect itself amid the prevailing anarchy of doubt, 
has at last demonstrated to the world that a Godless materialist- 
ic philosophy has no aspirations except those which lead down- 
ward, no heaven but annihilation, no goal but sensualism. 
Though Boodhism was not outwardly Atheistic at first, it rapid- 
ly became so, through opposition to Brahminical superstition, 
and also because of its own inherent tendencies. Any system of 
instruction which regards the Supreme Being as merely the pro- 
duct of pre-existent forces, without pre-eminent power or person- 
ality, while it may, through veneration for its predecessor, retain 
the outward symbols of religion for a time, and while it may 
formulate a code of morals to all appearance impregnible by the 
forces of logic, yet has no base for its existence in a world creat- 
ed and sustained by that Almighty Being whose majesty it so 
dishonors, and whose beneficent plans it so deliberately seeks to 
imperil. Morality in its proper sense 'is purity of heart of holi- 
ness. No outward politeness or enforced charity is of any ac- 
count in this world or any other; neither is a negative harmless- 
ness, born of craven fear of the law, and betokening no better 
inward motive than cowardice, of any real value. It makes a 
man harmless at the expense of his usefulness, agreeable at the 
price of trustworthiness. Without a divine basis, real morality 
cannot be known to man, and no Atheist or agnostic has ever 
tried to establish such a thing, while most of them have declar- 
ed the uselessness of such a code. Boodhism, therefore, as a 
moral code, is a mere pretense and sham. There can be no real 
morality without religion. A brief view of its consequences will 
convince any one of this. While the world is indebted to Moses 
and Menu for the sublime character of Plato, Socrates, Solon, 
Pythagorons, Zoroaster, Christna, and even the founder of 
Boodhism; the latter, by drifting away from all original theistic 
landmarks, became responsible for the sceptical schools of 
Athens and Rome, where the foundations of all science were 
uprooted and destroyed; where reason was distrusted; revela- 
tion ignored; the evidence of the senses declared spurious and 
uncertain; moral responsibility flatly denied; virtue regarded as 
an accident, a folly, or a crime; wisdom, discarded; selfishness, 
advocated; sensualism, recommended; vice, extolled; licentious 
ness, crowned with the laurel wreath, and embalmed in poetry; 



UlSTOilY AX!) IMUl,(iS()I'l[Y ()F ATHEISM. 



s >derny, perpetrated in popular songs; slavey, ornamented 
with brutality, and decked with the plumage of remorseless 
wrong; heaven, mocked and scorned; earth, made a sensual 
elysium to the wealthy and powerful, and a dungeon to the poor 

and virtuous; death, welcomed only as a refuge from the conse- 
quences of an ill-spent life, to a guilty and deformed soul. For 
all these things, as well as for the debased condition of all ori- 
ental communities to-day, Boodhism is largely responsible. 
Though Gotama Boodha was a polygamist before he was a 
public teacher, and though he encou raged public courtesans 
and honored them with titles, and spent his last years as the 
guest of the Chief of them, yet to no specific immoral act can we 
point. Whether history is too meager, or whether his outward 
conduct, like that of a few of the most careful among the Greek 
philosophers, was wanting in flagrant violations of the rules of 
public morality, cannot now be certainly known. That he 
meditated much, is indisputable; and we know that studious 
habits, even with the undevout, have a tendency to keep the 
baser passions within bounds. But of the effects of his doctrines 
upon others, when adopted as a rule of conduct, we may speak 
more confidently. All Asia has felt his influence for more than 
two thousand years; and to-day his image is worshipped in their 
temples, from the Indus to the Hoang Ho, and the Great Tooth 
of Boodha occasions such pious pilgrimages as those of Mecca 
and Jerusalem 

Though Boodha' s life had been immaculate, the noxious in- 
fluence of his godless philosophy could not have been averted. 
It does not require a bad man to corrupt the world; a great, but 
mistaken one, answers better the purpose of Satan. Nor is it 
needful that a system of religion be as immoral as that of Joe 
Smith or Mahomet, in order to insure the ruin of its adherents. 
Tlie only thing necessary to make it ' ; the savor of death unto 
death" to every one who believes it, is that it be untrue. "Thy 
word [O, Lord,] is Truth." "Sane ify them through the truth," 
for ''without holiness no man can see the Lord.*' 

As an intellectual achievement the Philosophy of Boodha 
stands very high in the historical niche assigned to it by candid 
criticism ; but, as it was Godless, it has been a reproach to every 
nation embracing it, and has spread moral devastation along its 



34 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

lengthened track. Every system of materialistic philosopy that 
has ever been constructed upon Boodha's foundation, down the 
centuries from Democritus to Spencer, and from Diogenes to In- 
gersoll, has struck parricidal blows at the bulwarks of civiliza- 
tion, and sought to undermine the pillars of national integrity. 
Yet none of their leaders openly advise to commit crime. They 
simply, like Boodha, steal away the old landmarks which limit 
the freedom of man to the sphere of obedience to God, and cut 
those welcome fetters which bind the willing soul forever to its 
Maker, for life and love and purity and bliss throughout eterni- 
ty. Frederick of Prussia, the greatest of despots, gave religious 
freedom to his people. So did Caesar, and so did Robespierre 
in theory ; but freedom such as makes property secure and life 
desirable, is found only where the religion of Jesus Christ pre- 
vails, and moral responsibility to a personal God is publicly 
acknowledged and maintained. 




HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 35 



LECTURE III. 

Diabolical Character of the Atheism of Greece and Rome — Athe- 
ism Fully Tested in China and Hindoostan. 

Ingersoll asserts that "men are but the creatures of their sur- 
roundings, made what the} 7 are wholly by material causes, such 
as soil and climate;" and that great minds have never been 
found except in the "lands of respectable winters." 

What a satisfaction it must be to him to know that the first 
and greatest teacher of Atheism was a native ot India, a country 
where "respectable" winters are unknown, and where the flow- 
ers bloom their detiance to northern frosts from November to 
April, and from April to November ! 

Draper says in his "Conflict," (p. 122,) that "Boodhism * * 
acknowledges that there is a supreme power, but denies that 
there is a Supreme Being." Again he says (Hist. Intel. Dev. of E., 
p. o2,) "The Boodhist, having no God, expects extinction." "In 
a burning taper it [Boodism] sees an ef^gy of man. * * * If 
we interrogate it respecting the destiny of the soul, it demands 
of us what has become of the flame when it is blown out, and in 
what condition it was before the taper was lighted." (Conflict, 
p. 122.) Dr. Davy says concerning the Atheism of the followers 
of Boodha: "The Boodhists do not believe in the existence of a 
Supreme Being, self-existent and eternal, the Creator and Pre- 
server of the universe; indeed it is doubtful if they believe in the 
existence and operation of any cause besides fate and necessity. 
* * *■ They appear to be materialists in the strictest sense of 
the term." 

Boodha laid the foundation of all the philosophical scepticism 
that has since been developed. He affirmed, as Ingersoll does, 
that there is in the operations of nature no chance work, but an 
eternal physical necessity. He "denied the immediate interpo- 
sition of any such agency as Providence, maintaining that the 
system of nature, once arising, must proceed irresistably accord- 
ing to the laws which brought it into being." (Int. D. of E., p. 
57.) Thus, philosophically speaking, Gotama Boodha carried 
his speculations to the very verge of chaos. No materialist or 
sceptic of any age has been able to reach a point one step in ad- 



36 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

vance of Boodha. JSTot one of them has been able to explain 
how unintelligent matter can originate intelligent, laws, such as 
those by which it is governed, previous to the evolution of a 
human brain; or how intelligence and force can be inherent in 
that which it subordinates and modifies. Boodlia seems to hold, 
as Prof. Draper declares, (Conflict, p. 122,) that force by its ac- 
tivity, gives rise to the manifestation of matter, thus making 
matter to be the effect, rather than the cause, of force; but he 
fails to show whence force originates, or how it can belong as a 
quality to that visible entity which it produces. 

Such refined idealism only leads to the annihilation of all 
knowledge, and must of necessity end in materialism, since the 
absurdity of supposing an infinite force to act with invariable 
wisdom without having any conscious intelligence back of or 
within it, is too unbearable to continue to lodge safely inside of 
any cranium save that from which an empty Shell of metaphys- 
ics has banished the last traces of common sense. 

To this termination, therefore, the Greeks carried the philoso- 
phy of Boodha, affirming the uncertainty of all theories respect- 
ing truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Draper unhesitat- 
ingly adopts Boodha' s idealism, and undertakes to harmonize 
it with his own theory of the omnipotence of physical and mate- 
rial surroundings. His language is as follows: t; He [Boodha] 
tells us that there is no such "thing as individuality or personali- 
ty — that the Ego is altogether a nonentity, [as much so as the 
flame of a candle.] * *■' And what is the result to which all this 
(reasoning) carries us? Is it not that, in the philosophical con- 
templation of man, we are constrained to reject the idea of per- 
sonality, of individuality. ' * * * The ancient philosophers 
[except Boodhists] gave too much weight to his [man's] individ- 
uality." (Hist. In. D. of ft, pp. &l, 173, 172.) 

We must conclude from this that the utmost limit of sceptical 
thought, even the denial of the human, as well as the divine, 
personalny, was reached by Boodha; and that, instead of the 
boasted advancement in philosophy since his time, there has 
been in reality no progress except in physics, and in zoological 
classification, which fields live been patiently explored by men 
who rejected the fundamental maxim of all the sceptics, that 
science was impossible. Only in the practical application of 



IIISTOIIY AM) PHILOSOPHY OF ATIIK'SM. 1)7 



doctrines devoting mankind to the practice of sensualism, have 
the multitudes of disobedent unbelievers been left perfectly five 
by their lauded leaders. We shall soon have occasion to con- 
sider Boodha's theories in the light of their moral results. In 
so doing, we take no exceptions to the moral standard theoreti- 
cally set up by Gotama. Undoubtedly it was a part of the 
scheme of the arch-enemy of. souls in introducing this great rival 
of thedivine Savior, to give to his teachings the most fascinating 
and delusive character. Satan has usually appeared to man as 
an angel of light, and under no philosophical garb has he ear- 
,lier or more 'successfully maintained this false representation. 

We are perfect]} 7 willing to admit that by Boodha's moral 
•code nearly every flagrant vice is contemned, and many of the 
virtues extolled; but we maintain that, under the silken scarf of 
a specious and superficial morality, was concealed the danger- 
ous dagger of unbelief, and disloyality to the Giver of all good, 
which poisoned the stream at its fountain-head— the heart of 
depraved humanity. Draper is not backward in confessing of 
Boodhism that "since its object was ol together of a personal 
kind, the attainment of individual happiness, it was not possible 
that it should do otherwise than engender extreme selfishness." 
(Hist. In. D. of E., p. 53.) In China the works of Gotama have 
been published by the government in four languages, and in 800 
large volumes, yet "it is a melancholy fact that in China Bood- 
hism has led the entire population not only into indifferentism 
but into absolute godlessness." The reading of the [Buddhist] 
scriptures [he tells us] is regarded as an actual merit, whether 
its precepts are followed or not; and saying a formula by rote, 
or even turning the handle of a mill from which invocations 
issue forth, is considered as sufficient worship. (Hist. In. D. of 
Europe, pp. 54 r ' 55.) Says Draper concerning the morals of the 
people, who so zealously worship the tooth of Boodha and the 
shrine of Confucius : "the common expressions of that country 
betray: the materialism and indifferentism of the people, and 
their consequent immorality. 'The prisons,' they say, 'are 
locked night and day, but they are alwawsfull; the temples are 
always open, and yet there is nobody in them." (Ibem. p. 55.) 
Dr. Belcher, who compiled from many authorities a sketch of 
Paganism, speaks oft the tortures of unconvicted criminals, the 



38 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

cruel treatment of domestic slaves and concubines, the murder 
of female infants by thousands, and the general inhumanity of 
these people whose only gods are Confucius, Boodha, and earth- 
en idols. Dr. A. C. Roberts, editor of the Fort Madison (Iowa) 
Democrat, and an infidel, has been lately travelling in Boodhis- 
tic countries, and he gives unequivocal testimony to the despi- 
cable idolatry of the Chinese, the praying machines in general 
use there, and the idols in their temples, supposed to possess 
healing powers, whose features have even been worn away by 
the hands ot invalids seeking restoration. Another writer, 
(Watson,) who has written a symposium of Christian theology, 
says: "The modern idolatry of Hindoostan, which in principle 
differs nothing from that of the ancient world, * * is of great 
importance in enabling us to conceive justly of the true character 
and practical effects of idolatry in all ages. One Supreme Being 
is acknowledged by the Hindoos, [traces of Yedaism, not of 
Boodhism, remaining in this meager concession,] but they never 
worship him, nor think that he concerns himself with human 
affairs at all." Says Ward, in his history of the Hindoo My- 
thology, "The Hindoos believe in one God, so completely ab- 
stracted in his own essence, however, that in this state he is em- 
phatically the Unknown, and is consequently neither the object 
of hope nor of fear; he is even destitute of intelligence, and re- 
mains in a state of profound repose," There is nothing in the 
above quotations from the earlier writers to contradict Draper s 
statement that the Boodhists are and always have been Atheists, 
for the God they describe is simply a semblence of a Deity, di- 
vested of deific and even of conscious attributes, set up to please 
lovers of the primitive faith; and neither is there anything here 
contradictory or rudimentary to the Spencerian system of philos- 
ophy, or that of any other modern agnostic. On the contrary, 
it embraces them all, speaking of the unknown and unknow- 
able, the unconditioned and the illimitable, in the same terms, 
and with the same Atheistic and materialistic meaning, as Hux- 
ley and Bradlaugh et al. And that degraded, brutish, moral- 
miasma infected, wicked and idolatrous people still retain the 
same notions, showing most plainly the consequences resulting 
therefrom. 

Well has an eminent writer, (Belcher,) paid that the Chinese 



HISTORY' AND PlllI.oSoJMIV OF ATIIK1SM. ■)[) 

and Hindoos are the best commentary on Atheism. Says Wat- 
son, "deceit and falshood have been the character of the Chinese 
according- to the best authorities; and of the Hindoos it is stated 
by the most respectable Europeans, not merely missionaries, 
but by those who have long* held official, civil, and judicial 
situations among them, that their disregard of truth is uniform 
and systematic." (Institutes, Vol. 1, p. 59.) Says Sir John 
Moore of the Hindoos: "It is tne business of all to conceal and 
deceive." (Ibid.) Says Mr. S:aekey, (Ibid) "the honest men, 
as well as the rogues are pe.iju?ed," owing to the requirements 
of legal justice, so-called. Geo. Combe, in his articles on Capi 
tal punishment published some years ago in the Phrenological 
Journal, affirmed of B v.psh India fiat "no where in the world 
are crimes so frequent, or of sncli horrid character." We should 
remember that the correctness and beneficence of a system of 
philosophy or religion is not usually to be determined by the 
actions and deportment of its promulgator, who may have a 
sinister purpose to gain wealth, influence, rank or popularity, or 
may even be restrained by settled and fixed babies of his own 
which are not products of his philosophy, but of a previous sys- 
tem into which his eariy life was indoctrinated; but a system is 
better illustrated as to its capacity to -benefit mankind, after a 
wide scope has been reached, a vast number of persons brought 
under its influence, and a long interval of time has elapesed to 
bring hereditary changes into a bold relief. 

Concerning the creation, Boodha affirms nothing, except to 
teach a series of absorptions and recreations consistent with its 
parent Brahminism, and depending on the nature and constitu- 
tion of things, rather than on the will of any supreme directing 
mind. At the time of Thales, (640 B. C.) Boodhistic theories 
had not penetrated into Europe, and we find Thales declaring 
that water was the primordial element out of which all things 
originated, and in which the Deity in some manner resides; 
Anaximines, affirming that air is the true invifying and creative 
element; and Heraclitus, teaching that in fire resides the primi- 
tive and creative force. The latter expressly acknowledges the 
presence and controlling power of intelligence in the creation, 
though he fails to distinguish between the material element fire 
and the intelligenent principle guiding all things in their pro- 



40 HISTORY AKD PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

duction from heat. He had no idea that any one would ever 
speak of "heat as a mode of motion. ", Bat Pythagorons, born 
a century later than Thales, adopts notions concerning matter 
and the creation, very similar to those of Boodha, affirming that 
the world itself is an illusion, and could not have had any origin 
in time. The Gleatics also, according to Draper, "land us not 
only in blank Atheism, but in a disbelief of the existence of the 
world." (Draper* p. 99.) The language of Boodha is as fol- 
lows : "As to the external world, we cannot tell how far it is a 
phantasm, how far a reality, for our senses possess no reliable 
criterion of truth. (Idem, p/ 51.) It is a noticeable fact that 
many savage tribes entertain similar ideas. "The lower races, " 
says Sir J. Lubbock, "have no idea of creation. •* * * The 
.Abipones have no theory on the subject. They never troubled 
themselves about what went on in the heavens, and who was the 
Creator ; andjGroverner of the stars. * * $ The Siberians had 
no idea of a creator. - * >■$■ * The Bachapin Kaffirs assert that 
everything made itself. * '* ; f The Zulu Kaffirs have no no- 
tion of creation. "* . * * The same is also the case with the 
Hottentots. The Australians had no idea of creation. Accord- 
ing to Polynesian mythology, heaven and earth existed from the 
^beginning." (Or. of Civ., pp. 250-254.) 

, -That, in the remote past, the theological notions of all those 
people have been corrupted by scepticism in some form or an- 
other, there can be very little doubt ; for, even in Africa, there 
have been found many tribes who still hold very exalted notions 
of a Supreme Being, but who never worship him at all; believ- 
ing, like the Boodhists that God is too infinitely removed, both 
by distance and character, to notice anything on the earth, if he 
exists at all. Like the Chinese and Hindoos, they too have in- 
ferior deities and idols whom they worship. (See Or. of Civ., 
p. 253.) 

Now, as the inhabitants of China, India and Japan are known 
to have descended from civilized ancestors, and to have been 
corrupted both morally and intellectually by a false and vicious 
system of instruction, why may not the Africans likewise be the 
descendents of a more civilized and less depraved people ? The 
difference between them and the Asiatics exists only in degreeof 
depreciation, a difficulty easily removed by supposing their sep- 



[JISTOUl AND L'lIILOSOPIIY OF ATHEISM. 4J 

aration to have been earlier. That so great a philosopher as 
Boodha, has been furnished to every nation, is not intimated, 

but only that every age has furnished teachers and opportu- 
nities to those who prefer to doubt and disobey. If there are 
any tribes whose ancestors never possessed the rudiments of 
knowledge, manifestly philosophical Atheism could have had 
no place among the causes of their depredation, but nothing is 
more difficult than to determine the intellectual and moral status 
of the ancestors of those tribes which have preserved neither re- 
cords nor traditions. It seems by no means probable, accord- 
ing to the Bible narrative, that a high state of intellectual culti- 
vation ever existed anywhere among men during the infancy of 
the human race; and the absence of any records among the earl- 
iest civilized people', showing the existence of extreme sceptical 
views in India or Egypt, prove that faith in God was well nigh 
universal among civilized nations in those times; but the noble 
theistic conceptions, and high moral tone of the earliest Egyp- 
tian and Vedaic literature justify no such opinions as the agnos- 
tics have recently put fori :!i regarding the brutish and sensual 
character of primitve man. 

The theory of climate and soil, so strenuously advanced by 
Draper, Ingersoll and others to account for civilization and bar- 
barism, do not appear to me to satisfy the facts in the case. The 
greatest civilizations of the earth have flourished near the equa- 
tor. The Alexandrian school, library and museum, to which, 
Prof. Draper- says, we must trace all our accurate scientific 
knowledge, began, continued and ended their influence on Afri- 
can soil. Babylon, Ninevah, Tyre; the land of Chaldea where 
astronomical lore so early existed, India, the home of Boodha, 
called by D. M. Bennett "the cradle of the world"— all these 
celebrated cities and countries lie far down the sunny slope 
which basks in equatorial brilliancy. The Greenlander certain- 
ly experiences, if he does not enjoy, respectable winters, but the 
frigidity of his soul does not surpass that of the Hindoo, who has 
experienced the benefits of an artificial freezer known as Philos- 
ophical Boodhism. "Not soil, but soul, is the secret of liberty," 
says a modern preacher; and we may add that spiritual, and 
not physical, temperature is the secret of progress. The same 
soil that refused the savage a gleam of culture, now echoes to 



42 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

the wheels of progress. 

Ingersoll says "Christianity has always opposed every forward 
movement of the human race. Across the highway of progress 
it has always been building breastworks of Bibles, tracts, com- 
mentaries, prayer-books, creeds, dogmas and platforms.' 7 It is 
to be hoped that none of the platforms referred to are as insecure 
as that one upon which Mr. Ingersoll stood at Cincinnati, when 
he denounced the United States law against obscene literature. 
lam glad those breastworks have been thrown up. Like those 
erected by Gen. Grant in his advance upon Yicksburg, they 
have been necessary. They have kept back the minions 
of darkness who oppose the onward march of hu- 
manity. Had the principles contained in the Bible and 
prayer-books been gladly received into the hearts of the 
aborigines,* they would not now be melting away before the sun- 
shine of Christian civilization, like snow flakes in a summer's 
sun. Had Confucius told his followers to love their enemies, to 
do good to those who should hate them, and to pray for their 
persecutors, instead of teaching the doctrine of revenge, his 
nation might not now have become, as Prof. LeComte says, 
the "most conspicuous examples of petrified brain structure." 

When we approach the history of Greece and Home, we 
find Atheism, there as elsewhere, only in the garb of a de- 
stroyer of all faith and all knowledge. It hung like a black 
cloud over every city and home doomed to anarchy and turmoil. 
When teachers dare to publicly defend Atheism as a theory, 
the masses will dare to throw off all restraints to its practice. 
The Greek agnostics had no excuse for their scepticism. They 
had among them, from the earliest period, many wise men 
who taught the unity and personality of God. Homer, Heriod, 
Xenophanes, Thales, and many others, who lived 600 to 1,000 
years B. C, taught with some degree of accuracy those mono- 
theistic ideas which they had derived from the Chaldeans, 
Hebrews, and Persians. Pythagorons, who lived about 580 
years B. C, also taught that there was one God, who ruled 
over the universe, but he corrupted his theological teachings 
with the Indian doctrine of transmigation, and Boodha's ideal 
ism. Socrates and Plato, 3oo-4oo B. C, also subscribed to 
that monotheism which still largely prevailed throughout the 



HISTORY AND PII I LOKO PII V OF ATIIKI-vM. 4?> 

Asiatic dominions. It was about the same period (3oo to 4oo 
B.C.) that Pyrrho founded the sceptical school of philosophy. 
Pyrrho was not the first sceptic, bat it was he who brought 
scepticism into prominence and made it popular with the people. 
The condition of the people after this period is thus described 
by Prof. Draper: ''Greek philosophical criticism had * * * 
showed that man has no criterion of truth, that his ideas of what 
is good and what is evil * * * can have no foundation in 
nature * * * that right and wrong are nothing more than 
fictions, created by society for its own purposes. * * * Her 
leading men had become corrupt. They were ever ready to 
barter patriotic considerations for foreign gold." (Conflict, pp. 
3, 4.) A natural consequence following the removal of religious 
restraints. 

About The period Boo B. C, Greek culture began to be trans- 
ferred back to the place of its origin, through the influence of 
the Alexandrian campaigns, and Greece herself never afterward 
revived, though in perpetual communication with Alexandria. 
She has declined from that day until now, because she spurned 
the faith of her fathers. When Persia was invaded by Alex- 
ander, "the worshippers of the vile Olympian divinities were 
brought into contact with a grand, a solemn, a consistent re- 
ligious system, having its foundation on a philosophical basis. 
Persia, at the time of the Macedonian expedition, recognized one 
universal intelligence, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of 
all things, the most holy essence of truth, the Giver of all good, 
lie was not to be represented by any image, or any graven 
form.*' (Conflict, p. 15.) So superior, indeed, does this-shrewd- 
est of military tacticians and wisest of diplomatists discover the 
Oriental nations to be his own people, that he unhesitatingly 
transfers his seat of government, first to Babylon, and after 
wards to Alexandria. At the former place he doubtless dis- 
covered the traditions concerning Daniel, and the celebrity of 
his people among the nations immediately surrounding, which 
induced him to favor them with responsible positions, especially 
in Alexandria, which Draper calls the "intellectual metropolis 
of the [ancient] world," where the Bible was translated for their 
benefit and that of their new adherents. 

Provious to this time the Greeks had speculated to little pur- 



44 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

pose. "We date back all our accurate scientific knowledge to 
the Alexandrian campaigns," says Draper. [Conflict, p. 12.] 
Throwing away their early religious knowledge of one living 
and true God, and worshipping dead heroes and their images, 
despising and rejecting the instructions of the hated Persians 
and other oriental nations, the unruly and turbulent Greeks 
wandered even to India to find a theology sufficiently despicable 
for their use, and explored Egypt to seek and embrace a cor- 
rupt system which they desired not to restore to its original 
purity. To the justice of the above remark, the few magnificent 
exceptions furnish no denial sufficient to exonerate the Greek 
nation, or her learned (?) class. In Alexandria the influence of 
the Greeks provided an anatomical room for the dissection, not 
only of the dead, but actually of the living, who for crimes had 
been condemned," and this was "in spite of the prejudices of 
the age, and especially in spite of Egyptian prejudices." — (Con- 
flict, p. 26.) 

From the standpoint to which the above conclusions lead us, 
it is impossible to view the ancient world as dwelling in such 
dense ignorance concerning each others doings and beliefs as has 
been supposed by some. It must be b} 7 the influence of a lavor- 
ite hypothesis that both Draper and Bennett are led to cast 
away all past authority, and assert that Thales, though he 
journeyed to Egypt on purpose to increase his stock of knowl- 
edge, never was in communication with the learned class there, 
but only with the vulgar and illiterate. Draper and his Truth- 
Seeking (?) shadow both asseverate that Thales knew nothing 
about a formative intelligence; whereas all our prior authorities 
declare the contrary. If it were true that Thales is to be classed 
among the Atheists, it is rather singular that no ancient writer 
ever discovered the fact, and it is also very strange that he 
should .have lived a cotemporary with that stern and uncom- 
promising monothist Xenophanes without ever having his phi- 
losophy disputed. The fact is, it was reserved for those philoso- 
phers in Greece, who lived after the time of Gotama Boodha, to 
first enunciate principles involving the deification of matter and 
force. Anaximander, a cotemporary of Thales, seems to have 
more nearly foreshadowed the modern scientific theory called 
Substantiaiism than any other ancient philosopher. He held 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF A Till 



\:> 



that "creation was the decomposition of the [lilinite^ and that 
^'creation is the earthly existence of Grod, or God passing into 
eternal motion." (I). M. B. p. 93.) Parmenidesofthesufcceeding 
century, who followed closely the philosophy of Xenophanes 
and Anaxiniander, hardly succeeds in divesting said philosophy 
of its theistic traits. Two' statements by Prof. Draper deserve 
notice just here. First, he declares that at the period when 
learning began to decline in Alexandria, "men be^an to act as 
though there had never been such things as original invest i- 
s:ation and discovery among the human race, and that whatever 
truth there was in the world was not the production of thought, 
but the remains of an ancient and now all but forgotten reve- 
lation from heaven— forgotten through the guilt and fall of 
man." Again. k 'Christianity in its dawn was attended by a 
general belief that in the East there had been preserved a purer 
recollection of the ancient revelation) and that, hence from that 
quarter the light would presently shine forth:?; (Hist, in D. of 
E. pp. 154, 155) Now it does seem that comment here would be 
useless. The man who, in tile light of all these facts, can fail to 
discern hbw completely Atheism tailed in Greece, and how its 
worth'lessness was finally made apparent when brought face to 
face with a lustrous Asiatic Theism in the courts of Alexandria, 
must be more stubborn than Chas. Darwin, who dares, in the 
face of his own theories and a hereditary agnosticism, to ac- 
knowledge that facts rise majestically above all his speculations, 
and immutably demonstrate a God. 

We must now pass on to a consideration of the final effects of 
Atheism on the Greek and Roman empires, which, for all practi- 
cal purposes, may henceforth in these lectures be regarded as 
one broad homogeneous community, for such they were in poli- 
tics and religion. Again we quote from Prof. Draper, in prefer- 
ence to any Christian writer, where he contemplates Rome after 
her dominion had spread overlhe known 'world, embracing the 
Jew, the Greek, the African and the Briton in her ample fold, 
at a period- just antedating the ministry of our Savior. As re- 
gards their belief, he says, "the Sceptics had, with increased 
force, denied that we have any criterion of truth, and showed to 
their own satisfaction that man, at the best, can do nothing but 
doubt; and, in view of his condition here upon earth, since it has 



46 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

not been permitted man to know what is right and what is 
wrong, what is true and what is false, his wisest course is to give 
himself no concern about the matter, but tranquilly sink into a 
state of complete indifference at quietism." (Hist. In. D. of E. 
p. 164.) Is this the sublime agnostic philosophy, declaring that 
it is man's duty, or rather his best policy, to pay no attention 
to right and wrong? 

"The most superficial statement of philosophy among the 
Romans," he again declares, "shows us how completely re- 
ligious sentiment was effaced. The presence of sceptical thought 
is seen in the explanation of Terentius Varres, (B. C. Ho.) that 
the anthropomorphic gods are to be received as mere emblems 
of the forces of matter. * * * Lucretius' insinuations against 
the immortality of the soul, and his setting forth Nature as the 
only god to be worshipped *,•■.*.■* Cicero * * feels that it 
is inexpedient to communicate truth publicly, especially of a 
religious kind * * * believes God to be nothing' more than 
the soul of the world; discovers many serious objections to the 
doctrine of Providence; is uncertain whether the soul is im- 
mortal, but is clear that the popnlar doctrine of punishment in 
the world to come is only an idle fable." (Idem. p. 19o, 191.) 
"In the troublous times of the first Caesars, men had occasion 
to derive all the support they could from philosophy; there was 
no religion to sustain them." (Idem. p. 191.) "Such was the 
tone of thought among the cultured Romans," he continues, 
and "to this philosophical Atheism among them, was added an 
Atheism of indifference among the vulgar." (p 192.) This 
shows that the common people practiced that indifference which 
the philosophers advocated. 

As to the political effect, he says that "Kome [under the 
Caesars] never considered man as an individual, but only as a 
thing. Her way to political greatness was pursued utter) 3- re- 
gardless of human suffering. Conquest and rapine, the uniform 
aim of her actions, never permitted her, even at her utmost 
intellectual development, to comprehend the equal rights of 
men in the eyes of the law." (p. 193.) 'The Servile rebellion 
broke out; it was closed by the extermination of a million of 
those unhappy wretches; vast numbeis of them were exposed, 
for the popular amusement, to the wild beasts in the arena." 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 47 



(p. 183.) "Tacitus has recorded that on the occasion of the 
murder of Pedanius, after a solemn debate in the senate, the 
particulars of which he furnishes, the ancient laws were enforced, 
and 4oo slaves of the deceased were put to death, when it was 
obvious to every one that scarcely any of them had known of 
the crime. The horrible maxim that not only the slaves within 
a house in which a master was murdered, but even those within 
a circle supposed to be measured by the r^ach of his voice, 
should be put to death, shows us the small value of the lives of 
these unfortunates, and the facility with which they could be 
replaced." (p. 184.) 

A question here is apropos: if American slavery ever reflected 
so much discredit on Christianity as Garrison and Fred Douglass 
say that it did, what is to be thought of the above specimen of 
cruelty to slaves by an Atheistic nation, recorded by an infidel? 
And what must we think of a country where even the school- 
boys were wont to amuse themselves by lying in ambush armed 
with daggers to stab with impunity the unsuspecting slaves who 
might chance to come within their reach, thus preparing their 
youthful minds and hearts for a subsequent career of assassi- 
nation and treachery? (See Watson's Institutes, vol. I, p. 56.) 
Seneca informs us that the practice of compelling gladiators 
(slaves) to contend with wild beasts in the arena for the mere 
purpose of amusing the nobility, often cost Rome 2o,ooo human 
lives in a single month. (Ibid.) 

In regard to the morals of this deplorable period of human 
history. Draper further remarks that "law ceased to be of any 
value. A suitor must deposit a bribe before a trial could be 
had. The social fabric was a festering mass of rottenness. The 
people had become a populace; the aristocracy was demoniac; 
the city was a hell. No crime that the annals of human wicked- 
ness can show was left unperpetrated: remorseless murders; the 
i betrayal of parents, husbands, wives, friends; poisoning reduced 
to a system; adultery degenerating into incest; and crimes that 
cannot be written. * * * Of gluttony and debauchery the 
annals of the times afford disgusting proofs. The higher classes 
on all sides exhibited a total extinction of moral principle." 
Tacitus says: "The holy ceremonies of religion were violated; 
the adjacent islands filled with exiles; rocks and desert places 



48 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

stained with clandestine murders; and Rome itself a theatre of 
horrors where nobility of descent and splendor of fortune marked 
men out for destruction, where virtue was a crime that led to 
certain ruin * * * and where he wdio lived without an 
enemy died by the treachery of a friend." (Hist. In. D. ofE. 
pp. 187, 188.) To show beyond dispute that Atheism and im- 
morality increased and ilourished together, and must have 
helpicl each others progress, let the same author again speak: 
"The virtues that had adorned the earlier times disappeared, 
and in the end were replaced, by crimes such as the world had 
never before witnessed, and never will again."' This, from an 
infidel, ought to settle the question, and will settle it in every 
cap did mind. It may be well, however, to add the following 
mild rebuke and. admonition, sent by the apostles and elders 
among the Jewish Christian church to the Gentiles in Antioch, 
Lyria and Cilicia: "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and 
to us, to Lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary 
things: that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from 
blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from 
which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well." (Acts XV, 28, 
2 .) 

We notice several striking features in the history of the Greeks 
and Romans: first, their scepticism. Draper admits (p. 162) that 
"in -all their investigations, the starting point has been material 
conceptions, depending on the impressions or information of the 
senses," which is precisely the attitude and process adopted by 
Tvndall, Huxley, Darwin, and every other agnostic of the pres- 
ent day; and, the unreliability of the senses in matters beyond 
their reach soon becoming evident, "intellectual despair" over- 
took the Greek philosophy "within a single century." Where 
will it take us if w T e, like them, refuse to set any bounds to our 
jmnyi intellects? Almost 5oo years B. C., Parmenides began 
to corrupt the primitive monotheism of his predecessors in phi- 
losophy by hinting the impersonality of Deity. Zens, the 
Kleatic, still farther refined this notion into idealistic pantheism, 
s >:new T hat resembling 'that taught by Boodha, affirming that 
only one eternal, impersonal being exists, and that matter is 
therefore only a. chimera.. The final result of the Eleatic phi- 
1< sophy, Draper fells us, was blank Atheism, 



7IISTOUY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHElW. 449 

They were succeeded by the Sophists, who "not only denied 
that human reason had thus far succeeded in ascertaining any- 
thing," but also affirmed "that, since we have no standard of 
the true, neither can we have any standard of the good;" that 
might makes right, and that "hence the wise will give himself 
no concern as to a meritorious act or a crime, seeing that the 
one is intrinsically — neither better nor worse than the other; 
but he will give himself sedulous concern as respects his outer 
or external relations — his position in society. If his occasions 
are such as to make it for his interest to depart from the social 
rule, let him do it in secresy; or, what is far better, let him 
cultivate rhetoric, that noble art by which the wrong may be 
made to appear the right." (Hist. Int. D. ofE. p. 100). "It is 
no wonder that the social demoralization spread apace," he 
continues, "when men like Gorgias, the disciple of Empedocles, 
were to be found, who laughed at virtue, made an open derision 
of morality, and proved by metaphysical demonstration that 
nothing at all exists." (p. 102). How truly has the same 
writer declared that 4 *the brink of Boodhism was here ap- 
proached;" for Boodha was their teachar. "In the very first 
act," says Draper, "Greek philosophy excluded God from his 
own world." Anaxagorous,- 600 years B. C., exclaims plain- 
tively, "nothing can be known, nothing can be learned, nothing 
can be certain. Sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short." 
Xemphanes, 00 years B. C, tells us that it is impossible for us 
to be certain, even when we utter tha truth. Parmenidus, nearly 
5oo years B. C, declares that the very constitution of man pre- 
vents him from ascertaining absolute truth. Empedocles, 444, 
B. C, affirm^ that all philosophical and religious systems must 
be unreliable, because we have no criterion by which to test 
them. Pyrrho, founder of the sc^pitcal school, says we have no 
criterion of truth. Carneades, whom D. M. Bennett declares to 
be "the extreme enunciator of ancient scepticism," made it his 
business to argue on both sides of all disputed questions^ show- 
ing by the arts of rhetoric, that it was impossible to know what 
is true and what is false. "He did not admit that there is any 
such thing as justice in the abstract, declaring that it is a pure- 
ly conventional thing." (Draper, p. 126). Pliny, the Roman, 
affirms that "the soul and body have no more sense after death 



5.0. HISTQRy AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

than "before we were born." (Watson Inst. vol. I, p. 54). CaBser 
declares "that beyond death there is neither place for care or 
joy." (Ibid/) "Seneca ■ * *■ * : _' says that death makes us in- 
capable of good or evil" (Ibid). "The Epicureans maintained 
that the world arose from chance, that the soul is mortal, and 
that pleasure was to be regarded as the ultimate end of man." 
(Mosheim Eccl. Hist. vol. 1, p. 19. — also Drapers Hist. p. 
1250- 

The results of alp this scepticism were most deplorable. k 'No 
nation ever practiced grosser immorality," says Bancroft, "than 
Greece during the height of her intellectual refinement." Draper 
admits that "the Romans as a nation had no regard to truth and 
rigjit," (p. ! 149); and affirms that there was little learning or 
liberty in Greece, outside of the aristocracy and favored classes. 
(See Hist, Int. J)j of E. pp. 97, 99). Sir J. Lubbock declares 
that the statute of Jupiter in Rome was every year sprinkled 
with haman blood, 'ill after the time of Christ, (see Or. of Civ. 
p. 242). During the se'ige of Jerusalem, the Romans slew with- 
out distinction of age or sex, eleven hundred thousand persons,, 
and sold captives until buyers could no longer be found. 
(Belcher's History, p. 34). Well has an eminent writer (Wat- 
son), said: "That they should be better than their gods, was 
not to be expected, and worse they could not be." 

Cicero declares that, although some of the philosophers taught 
very good precepts to their followers, yet very few of the phi- 
losophers themselves obeyed the rules of morality. (Watson's 
In. vol. 1, p. 17).- • Diogenes "delighted to offend ^very idea of 
social decency,'' says Draper, (p. HI) committing publicly acts 
that would subject him to the lock-up in any city of Europe or 
America. Some of the philosophers taught very corrupt princi- 
ples. Epicurus taught that we should provide for every sensual 
gratification, (Draper, p. 128). The Stoics taught that to for- 
give an injury is weak and wrong. (Idem, p 188). "Aristotle 
taught that deformed or infirm children ought to be destroyed; 
Cicero taught that illict communications among the unmarried 
cannot be wrong. Solon enacted that sensuality is irreproacha- 
ble, except when practiced by a slave. Menandes taught that a 
lie is better than a hurtful truth," and even Plato, the wisest of 
all the heathen,, taught free loveism as a moral theory. AH the 



HISTOID AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. ;>1 



people, both educated and illiterate, of Greece and Rome, were 
corrupted. u Several states of Gnreece legalized unnatural Inst, 
and encouraged it by public statutes. Philosophers and legis- 
lators sanctioned the grossest indecency, drunkenness, and 
lewdness during the festivals of Bacchus, Cybele, and Ceres. 
Rome was distinguished by licentious divorces, the procuring of 
foeticidal crime, the murder of infants, the nuisance of public 
stews, the sports of gladiators, &c, all winked at by the legis- 
lators. 1 * (Fleetwood's introduction, p. 20, slightly altered). On 
special occasions, human sacrifices were offered up to their 
false gods, whom no one any longer believed in. ( \\ 'at son's Inst, 
vol. 1, p. 6 )). "Women of the higher class were so lascivious, 
depraved, and dangerous, that men could not be compelled to 
contract matrimony with them; marriage was displaced by con- 
cubinig 1 ; even virgins w\3re. guilty o? in em * 3'ivable im- 
modesties; great officers of state and ladies of the court, of pro- 
miscuous baths and naked exhibitions '•• * * : Augustus * 
*> * was compelled to impose penalties on the unmarried * 
? * Gseser * ¥ * put; a premium on' marriage in view of 
its general avoidance. '"•'■' * * Not that the Roman women 
refrained from the gratification of their desires; their depravity 
impelled them to such wicked practices as cannot be named in 
a modern book. They actually reckoned the years, not by the 
consuls, but by the men they had lived with. v (Hist. Int. D. 
ofE. p. 1ST). 

Can any one who regards history and possesses common in- 
telligence, look favorably upon modern Atheism (deceptively 
termed agnosticism, free thought, &c.,) which openly extols the 
philosophy and civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and de- 
rides religion, Christ, and the Bible? These Atheists are all 
around us. Shall we be so foolish as to hear them? 

J. H. Kellogg, M. D v author of several valuable books, says 
in his * 'Plain Facts:' ' "It is a sickening thought that any pre- 
vious epoch could have been more vile than this; but history 
presents facts which disclose in ancient times periods when lust 
was even more uncontrolled than now; when vice was univer- 
sal; and when virtue was a thing unknown * ' \f ;..* ~No ex- 
cess of vice could surpass the licentiousness of the Ptolemies, 
who made of Alexandria [Draper's heathen metropolis] a 



4f>52 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATTIKrSV 



bagnio, and all Egypt a hot- bed of vice. * * * Tyre and 
Sidon, Media, Phoenicia, Syria, and all the Orient, were sunk 
in sensuality. Fornication was made a part of their worship. 
Women carried through the streets of the cities the most ob- 
scene and revolting representations. Among all these nations a 
virtuous woman was not to be found; for, according to Herodi- 
tus, the young women were by the laws of the land obliged, 
once in their lives, to give themselves up to the desires of 
strangers in the temple of Venus, and were not permitted to re- 
fuse anyone. Among the Greeks the same corruptions prevailed 
in the worship of Bacchus and Phallus, which was celebrated 
by processions of half nude gills 'performing lascivious dances 
with men disguised as satyrs.' Prostitution was in repute in 
Greece. The most distinguished women were courtesans. The 
great Caeser was such a rake that he has been said to have mer- 
ited to be surnamed every woman's husband. Antony and 
Augustus [Gibbons philosophic heathen statesmen] were equally 
notorious. The same sensuality prevaded the masses as reigned 
in the courts, and was stimulated by the eratic poems of Ovid, 
Catullus, and other poets of the time. Caligula committed the 
the horrid crime of incest with all his sisters, even in public. 
His palace was a brothel. The Roman Eempres, Messalina, 
disguised herself as a prostitute, and excelled the most degraded 
courtesans in her monstrous debaucheries. Nero committed 
rape on the stage of the public theaters, disguised as a wild 
beast. What must have been the condition of a nation that 
could tolerate a Helioyabalus riding through the streets in a 
state of nudity, drawn by women in the same condition?" 




HIsToUv AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATUKIsM. ;,:, 



LECTURE IV. 

DoWx Tliti G»TURIES IT Has TlUtLKD ITS SLOW LknutM 
Along— Paris, Baden, England^O'ek the Lano 

()F THE FliEE, THE OLOtlD IMPENDS. 

"For their rock is not as our rock, even our (neniies them- 
selves being judges." Deuteronomy, 32:31. 

"It is one of the plainest facts," says Lecky (History of 
Europeon Worlds, vol. 1, p. 147,) "that neither the individuals 
nor the ages that have been most distinguished for intellectual 
achievements have been most distinguished for moral excellence, 
and that a high intellectual and material civilization has often 
existed with much depravity. " 

I do not know of any Europeon nation, ancient or modern, 
of which he could have spoken tins so truly as of the sceptical 
people of Greece and Rome, unless it be the equally sceptical 
people of France. It has been well said that so long as Paris 
continues as it is and has been lor a century past, mankind 
cannot altogether be persuaded that there is no such a place as 
hell. And } T et Paris is a genuine child of Athens and Rome, 
inheriting therefrom all her predominant traits. No parent and 
child ever more truly resembled each other. Even the rebel- 
lions there under p ipal rule only evince a desire on the part of 
the child to break away from the rule of a partially ignorant 
and decrepit parent, in order that the parent's youthful ways, 
long since repented of, may reappear in the life of the turbulent 
offispring. On the banks of the Danube, the Seine, the Ganges, 
and the Illinois rivers, we hear the same plaintive cry: "Life is 
a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eterni- 
ties. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry 
aloud and the only answer is the echo of our w^ailing cry." 
"What man who thinks [defiant! y instead of reverently] can 
help repeating the words of Ennius: 'If there are gods, they 
certainly pay no attention to the affairs of men/ 5 (IngersolD 
The Greek "sceptics boasted that they knew nothing, that they 
had discovered knowledge to be impossible. Spencer, Brad- 
laugh and others speak of the unknowable as though it em- 
braced everything of real value to the human soul, and their 
followers laugh that cynical laugh, that diabolical leer, so hide- 
ous and yet so silly, at those who pretend to know of spiritual 



54 HISTORY ANh PHILOSOPHY OF ATiiKrRir. 



things. Descartes denied all certain knowledge of anything 
except himself. Ingersoll says he claims to be the peer of any 
man, and that in the presence of the unknowable, and upon a 
subject that nobody knows anything about, nor ever did, he has 
as good a right to guess as anybody else. 

I do not know that any one has summed up all the beauties 
of this system of know-nothing philosophy better than Ruskin, 
who says: fc 'Nothing delights a true blockhead so much as to 
prove a negative — to show that everybody has been wrong. 
Fancy the delicious sensation to an empty headed creature of 
imagining for a moment that he had emptied everybody else's 
head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his own hollow 
bottle of a It ad has had the best of other bottles, and has been 
h'rst to become empty— -first to know nothing." 

When the sceptics of Athens, Rome, and Paris had found out 
to their own satisfaction that there were no such things as right 
and wrong; when they had undermined the social system, de- 
stroyed tir sanctity of marriage, and inaugurated a system of 
wholesale prostitution, in.aniicide and inhuman butchery; did 
they really suppose no one had ever reached, this sublime state 
of philosophy before themi li so, they surely needed to make 
another confession of ignorance, lor among the lowest savages 
such doings aiy frequent. Sir. John Lubbock declares that the 
lowest savages are almost totally w * wanting in moral feeling," 
that some of thvin murder two-thirds of their children, (Or. of 
Civ. p. ^6<>), and that thousands of them live as P'ato and 
Epicurus recoiiHiieuded. by precept, and as Boodha, Socrates, 
Voltaire, Roussou, Byron and other sceptics encouraged by 
their exam pii, 'n a S' ate of licendous communism. (See Or. of 
Civ. pp. 66, b8, &c) Among some of these tribes it hai ever 
been regard, d as e punishable offense for one man to a f » opi- 
ate any one woman as his wife; or for anyone wonm i to con- 
tine her devot on to a single lndividua 1 of the male seir. 

In all ages the &cepjcs have been strenuous advocates of 'indi- 
vidual liberty. Li Li's they are not in advance of the Comanche 
Indians, who •■ believe that when they were created, uie Great 
Spirit gave them the p ivilege of a free and unco is Valued use 
of their individual facuHies." (Or. of Civ. p. 264). As a natural 
consequence of this, there is no deed of cruelty of which they 



iiirtotiy axi> philosophy or vtttm \r. 



have not been guilty, even to the habitual mnrd'-r i>, t ipjr i jed 
parents. Cicero and modern sceptics have* not been m .»,-,• wil- 
ling to do away with the idea of future punishment th n liavj 
the North American indiais. "Among Mi Mv.yto.nssni-d Peru- 
vians, religion was entirely independent <» m< »' at considerations, 
and in some Other parts of America, the ,utu.-e condition is sap- 
posed to depend, not on conduct, but on rank. la North 
America, 4t is rare,' says Tanner, 'to obs= rv j among the Indi- 
ans any ideas which would lead to the belief tliaf tiny look up- 
on a future state as one of retribution.' " (Or. of Civ. p. 2&.k) 

Says l>r. Kellogg." in his admirable work on sexual science, 
"infanticide and exposure were the custom among the Rojh?h*k, 
Medes, Cananites, Babylonians, and other eastern nations, 
with the exception of the Israelites i.nd Egyptians * * * 
Infanticide was also permitted among tin Chinese, and Bur- 
dach saw, during the last century, vi 1 ieh s going round the 
streets of Pekin daily to collect the bodies of the dead infants. 
Today there exist foundling hospitals to rec ive children 
abandoned by their parents. The same custom is also observed 
in Japan. * *■ * The Greeks practiced infanticide system- 
atically, their laws at one time requiring the destruction of 
crippled or weakly children. 

In one of Boodha's chief cities, marriage was forbidden by 
law, and high honors attached to the lady who held the rank of 
Chief Courtesan. It was with this distinguished personage that 
Boodha made his honi" in his old age. "L T ntil recently, the 
courtesans were the only educated women in India. In Athens 
courtesans were highly respected." (Or. of Civ. pp. 9o, 91.) 
•'Among the Greeks the education of women was chiefly con- 
fined to courtesans." (Watson's Institutes, p. 235.) Thousands 
of Roman and Greek women of nobility and virtue fled the 
country during the carnival of Satan, and took refuge among 
the Jews during the century preceding the Christian era. In 
India to-day a married woman is considered too vile a person to 
associate with on terms of equality. In many heathen countries 
women are no more allowed to eat at the same table with their 
husbands than slaves are. Yejt we hear sceptics on our streets 
extolling the heathen, and vilifying the Patriarchs. Ingersoll 
declares that "most of the women whose society would tend to 



£6' ftlSTORY iSffl £iiilOsOPM OF ATiiEUyf, 

increase the happiness of man," are now or will be, in helL If 
"by hell he includes Vesali, Athens, Rome and Paris as its visi- 
ble breathing holes,- and if by man he means himself, we can 
jucfge how well his ideas of female character have been mould d 
after the patterns set Up in all the Atheistic cities and countri* s, 
as well as ih some idolatrous lands. He also asserts that all the 
greatest thinkers are there; by which he doubtless means the 
greatest fcnow-nothingS; But when he claims all the poets, we 
know how destitute of any regard for facts he must be, since 
none btit the wretched Byron would have owned the opprobri- 
ous title, unless it be the monster Robspierre, who spent most of 
his youth in writing Verse and admiring the heathen philosophers, 
But Mr< Ingersoll puts the cap-sheaf on his system when lie 
rebukes the missionaries for shocking the minds of the devout 
heathen idolaters; while he, ''going about," as Collyer says, 
"with a chip on his shoulder," vents his blasphemy upon the 
ears of everyone, and "is likely in the end," as Collyer again 
says, "to be Voted a common nuisance," He says he has been 
saved by disobedience, but in the light of history, we have good 
ground to doubt his salvation on such terms, especially as 
James Redpath has described him (see article in Truth Seeker 
on Wendell Phillips and R. G. Ingersoll), as being very luxu- 
riant in his dress,*' "smoking incessantly," ''indulging mode- 
rately in champagne," and "regarding all true oratory as con 
sisting in the exalted [or violent] expression of the passions and 
emotions of human nature," The charge of mercenary hypocri- 
sy declared against him by a prominent railroad official (see K. 
C. Times, 1882,) on his own private personal knowledge, is 
entitled to some weight, and it is well known that in his younger 
days he made Lawyer Palmer, of Clinton, 111,, a butt of ridi- 
cule because he would not take a drink over the bar with the 
now famous but still intemperate temperance orator, 

When the sceptics of our day talk of a Sunday for recreation 
and pleasure, with beer gardens^ dances, and gay mnsic, should 
we jail tu remember the prophecy which the stoic Zeno uttered 
in the hearing of Epicurus? Said he, "your garden will be 
crowded, but it will be disgraced; your name will be in every 
mouth, but every mouth Will be unworthy of it; na- 
tions will have you in honor, but ere it is so, they will be in 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF AtlPEISM. 57 



ruins; our degenerate country will worship joil, and expire at 
your feet," Zeno's prophecy came true with regard to the Epi- 
cureans; will it not prove true with those of om* own day who 
follow the same beaten path? I). M. Bennett T whose corrupt 
and revolutionary organ is read by more sceptics than read any 
other newspaper, says in his work on Sages, &c, (pp. 179, 180) r 
that Epicurus was the purest of all the ancient philosophers, 
and his philosophy correct and impregnable. Will the people 
follow? Ruin beckons them to its embrace. Demetrius 
Polioveetes, who lived in the days of Epicurus, and who, Draper 
says, ''understood the condition of things thoroughly," declared 
there was not, in his time, in Athens, one great or noble mind. 
Epicurus taught that "the pleasures of the soul all originate in 
the pleasures of the flesh," and "that we may learn from the 
brutes, who pursue pleasure and avoid pain, what ought to be 
our course." (Hist. Int. D. of E. p. 123). This is exactly what 
our modern inlidels believe. Sensual gratification, worldly 
pleasure, is their end and aim, regardless of the fearful truth 
that the wages of sin is death. It is true, as Ingersoll says, that 
"Voltaire left th^ quiver of ridicule without an arrow," but as a 
pearl-diver he was not a success. Few indeed of the precious 
gems of truth can be traced to him, or any other sceptic. 

It is said by some infidels that he who dares to doubt deserves 
to know; but how few have been the contributions to our pres- 
ent knowledge from a sceptical source! JSTot a single great 
scientific discovery has ever been traced to a sceptic. Some of 
them have adopted the maxim that to doubt is the beginning of 
wisdom; but none of them have ever ceased doubting, until the 
foundations of all science and philosophy w T ere by them over- 
turned. Amid the prevailing anarchy of thought among the 
Greeks and Romans, to be a Deist was an evidence of much 
independence of mind, and grandeur of soul; and to the De- 
ists, who unhesitatingly ascribed all their accurate knowledge 
of moral truth to the Oriental traditions and scriptures, all our 
science older than the Mahommedan invasion, may be clearly 
traced; while of that which nourished among the Saracens, and 
was by them communicated to the people of Europe, infidels 
themselves who are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend history 
admit the Kestorian Christians and Jews to have been the 



58 HISTORY AXD PHILOSOPHY OP ATHEISM. 

, . _ _ ■ _ 

primitive source. Of Pyrrho, Carneades, and a score of others, 
we can only say that their career and teachings simply left be- 
hind them a froth and babble npon the waters of oblivion. We 
might also mention that cynical cur Diogenes, whose contempt 
for religion went so far, that having rashly promised to sacrifice 
to one of the popular deities, and being reminded of his vow, 
took a louse from his head (of which he doubtless had many to 
spare), and sagely cracked it on the altar. His irreligion how- 
ever did not equal his indolence, ill-temper and indecency. 
Lucretius, also, among all his wild conjectures and unprofitable 
guessing, chanced to make one guess that is not yet proven to 
be incorrect, viz: that matter is composed of indivisible atoms. 
Thus he succeeded in handing down to posterity one idea,wnicli 
posterity has concluded— provisionally to adopt, though not. for 
any reason assigned by Lucretius, since he never assigned any. 
Whether his discovery was in consequence of the law of ^natu- 
ral select on/' or of the "tendency to variation" in the human 
mind, has not been determined; but if these do not account for 
it, it will be explained either by the "pre-potency of nature," 
or the "fortuitous concourse of atoms." 

And then there is Democretus, whose wealth furnished to his 
philosophy a certain degree of prestige; but, as he taught "that 
even to reason itself there is an absolute impossibility of all 
certainty; that scepticism is to be indulged in to that degree that 
we may doubt whether, when a cone has been cut asunder, its 
two surfaces are alike; that the final result of human inquiry is 
the absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge; 
t'.iat, even if the truth is in his possession, he can never be cer- 
tain of it; and that the world is an illusive phantasm." (Hist. 
1 .1. D. of E. p. 93); we must behold in this philosopher a de- 
stroyer, rather than a preserver or an upbulider, of science. 
Whenever men's doubts carry them so far as to cause them to 
reject both reason and observation, as that of Democritus did, 
we may safely pray to be delivered from their influence. It is 
sometimes most unjustly charged that Christians reason against 
the use of reason, bat no class of persons ever carried this prin- 
ciple farther than the Greek and Roman philosophers. They 
even declared the bodily senses to be deceivers, and their testi- 
monies delusive, thus leaving reason, whose decisions they also 



T1IST0KY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 59 

distrusted, an impotent throne and a deserted realm. Even as 
late as the seventeenth c mtuiy, Des Cartes pursued a course of 
sceptical reasoning which finally led him to deny the certainty 
of ail knowledge, except that of his own existence. "I think," 
said he, ' k *;iid therefore I exist' 1 — unconscious that the admis- 
sion of even so much as his own existence overturned all his 
Atheism; for, if thought in man implies a thinker, thought in the 
universe proclaims a God. 

Of the French Revolution, three things may be said: first, it 
constitutes only another illustration in history, of the political 
and general results of scepticism; second, it was preceded and 
accompanied by an almost universal dissemination of Atheistic 
sentiment among all classes of people; third, however great the 
evils it professed to remedy, no sane man has ever doubted thai 
its own enormities transcended them all. Even the horrib e 
inquisition, which jeopardized only the Jives of unbelievers, de- 
rives credit from a comparison with the horrors of those thin s, 
when neither wealth, nobility, wisdom nor virtue, nay not even 
friendship itseli' proved a safe refuge from the guillotine, where 
midnight assassins paid their homage at noonday to a kariot 
deified aid crowned as the Goddess of reason; where, on the 
tombstones of the dead was written, '"death is an eternal sleep." 
So wade-spread was the scepticism of that period, that it cor- 
rupted Germany, England, and to some degree even 
America. 

In Great Britain, scepticism did not usually take the form of 
Atheism. David Hume may perhaps be regarded as the most 
popular, as he certainly was the most philosophic of all the 
English Atheistical waiters, and he died with the saddest con- 
victions, after admitting that his works had been successfully 
refuted by a certain Scotch theologian, and confessing that his 
own philosophy inspired him with nothing but gloom and de- 
spair. He says, "I am affrighted and confounded with that 
forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my pliilosophj'. When 
I look abroad, I foresee on every side di-pute, contradiction, 
and distraction, within I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. 
Where am I or what? From wmat cause do I derive my ex 
istence, and to what condition shall I return? I am confounded 
with these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most de- 



60 niSTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

plorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest 
darkness." (Treatise on Human Nature, vol. 1, p. 458). In the 
seventeenth century, infidelity was set up in England," says 
Dr. Ditzler, "and culminated in the eighteenth century. I will 
appeal to a class of witnesses that are far removed from our 
side — the popular literature of the day r the poetry, the dramatic 
literature and the commentaries on it. The plays that were* 
acted at the theaters were so indecent, so revolting, that not a 
page in whole volumes can you read. Every scene, every act, 
every page is obscenity itself — designed to be so. Women were* 
treated as though there wias no thought of their purity in the- 
public mind. All that Draper says of Rome we rind here. 
Ramsey says of England at that time of infidelity, when Mor- 
gan, Chubb, Hume, Gibbon, Toland and Herbert led the iniidel 
sneerers, that she was as corrupt and degraded as Rome in the 
the darkest days of her infamy. A century before, when Chris- 
tianity was triumphant, her literature was pure,, elevated, and 
sublime. Spencer, Shakspeare, Massinger, Milton r &c, led the 
popular taste. But as soon as iniidels led, Beaumont and 
Fletcherkd the way. Wycherly, Congrue, D'Uepy, Smollet, 
Dry den follow, and a seething sewer of infidelity— a loathsome 
steaming pit of rottenness — is the spectacle before us. All lite- 
rary critics,, Schlegel, the great scientific and scholarly German,, 
the commentators on these works, all agree in their recital of 
the disgusting literature, and low and base state of morality in 
England at that time. The marriage relation was held to be 
simply a cloak to screen vice, 4t a goodly umbrella" to screen 
them from the searching eyes of the few decent people in the 
realm. A wife was "a galling load." "Women were not 
courted,.' says one, 'they were pawmed.' " (Rev. Ditzler r D. D,. 
debate with Jamieson, reported in Truth Seeker.) 

This deluge of scepticism and immorality was met and assu- 
aged by the iirm, dignified, mild but philosophic treatises of 
such men as Sir. Isaac Newton, Bishop, Butler, Dr. Whately, 
&c, whose works are read even yet with interest wherever the 
English tongue is spoken. In America, the rapid progress of 
the several Protestant churches under the stimulus of freedom 
held carnality and its twin sister infidelity in check for nearly a 
hundred years.. In Germany, Atheism planted seeds of discord 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 01 



and rebellion which still live in the Nihilism of to-day, foment- 
ing insurrections and promoting political assassinations and 
strife. Thomas Paine, the deist, during his life, visited and 
dwelt in several Christian countries, but the only time when we 
read of his life being in danger, was when he was thrown into 
the Bastile by those Atheistical French libertines whom he had 
sympathetically joined with in their revolutionary schemes. 
Hear what Heinzein, the leader of the German Red Republi- 
cans, said in his paper published at Genva in 1848: "From now 
there is a deadly conflict between our party and our opponents: 
the one or the other party must be destroyed — nay annihilated. 
Only when the present social system is entirely undermined and 
destroyed, the principles of our party can be realized. Religion 
must be expunged from the educational system, must vanish 
from the thoughts of men. Revolution is the total annihilation 
of religion. By religious freedom, we mean only freedom from 
all religion. We do not want liberty of faith; but w r e want to 
eslablish the necessity of infidelity. We desire by no means 
reform, but absolute revolution. "Prayer books'' (says Neif in 
his Politics of Peasants) "which inculcate humility — the hu- 
mility of dogs— must be burned, and we must espouse the re- 
ligion of bravery. Only when the blood of thousands of slain 
shall have ascended up to heaven, liberty and love will reap- 
pear on earth." Another Atheist, Hof of Manheim, affirms that 
"the great leading idea of the revolution at Baden was, there is 
no God. Dortu, Heirig, Drutzschler, have died with this con- 
viction. We have fought for liberty, blood, revenge. The 
heart of the reaction must emit a greater stream of blood than 
the old Rhine." (T. S. Bell, M. D., in Christian Evangel- 
ist.) 

Says the Washington (D.C.) Union of that date: "In 1848 it 
became more and more apparent that rationalism leads in its 
consequences to absolute Atheism. How deeply the masses 
were gangrened may be delineated by a life sketch from a 
German tavern in Genoa in 1849. It is Saturday before Easter 
Sunday. The night progresses in carousals which cannot be 
described, even before men, without a blush. At the dawn of 
the morning the guests commence what they call divine service. 
A journeyman is appointed clergyman, all the guests appear 



62 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

before him, confessing their sins in a ludicrous manner, paying- 
one penny for their absolution. After the service the money is 
used to buy rum for the crowd." (T. S. Bell, M. D.) One of 
the popular Atheistic songs of those people run about as fol- 
lows: 

"Cursed be God, who is blind and deaf, 
To whom we bave in vain prayed for faith, 
In whom we vain have trustid; 
He has cheated us, He has fooled us." 

Of late years some of the sceptics have tried to break the force 
of the argument against their teachings which has been drawn 
from the French revolution, by asserting that the Catholics 
forced upon the French people the only alternative aside from 
slavery, and also that Robespierre was himself a Catholic instead 
of an infidel. 

It is true that in France, as elsewhere under papal rule, ex- 
cessive tyrany was practiced, and it is also a fact that, a few 
days before his political downfall, when the awful consequences 
of his bloody career began to disgust him with himself, his 
policy, his life, and his religious belief, that great monster of 
iniquity, Robespierre, whose cowardice equaled his ferocity, 
and whose shrewdness matched his timidity, did make a pro- 
fession of that saniB Catholic faith which he had before so per- 
petually ridiculed, as Voltaire and many others have done in 
their hours of dread and danger; but where, save in Atheistic 
France, has revolution produced such anarchy, and where, but 
in Prussia alone, whose monarch acknowledged himself to be a 
pupil as well as a host of Voltaire for a period, was the transition 
from popery to Protestantism attended by insurrections and com- 
munistic troubles which threatened the subversion of all gov- 
ernment whatsoever? 

Perhaps no man ever tried harder than Robespierre, in his 
admiration for the heathen philosophers, to make his life a pat- 
tern after the Greek and Roman models, (and for this we can 
scarcely blame him so long as Christians continue to indorse 
those heathen poets and historians, Homer, Virgil, Herodatus 
and Csesar, by placing their works in the college corricula and 
libraries); but when he saw the scenes of the more ancient 
metropolis being re-enacted in the streets of Paris at his own 
instigation, his wicked heart failed him in view of the teachings 



HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 63 

of a venerated ancestry, and he quailed from a consummation 
now too apparent to deny. 

At the first, there was a numerous assembly congregated to 
publicly and formally change the religion of France. Even 
ecclesiastics, under the influence of fear, (in some cases on ac- 
count of sympathy no doubt, for Voltaire's influence was not 
confined to secular persons only, but largely penetrated the 
minds of hyhocrites in the church), professed a willing sub- 
mission to the party in power, and opened churches and temples 
of worship to the new divinity. In one of these structures a 
young lady ballet dancer of doubtful antecedents w T as chosen to 
personate the goddess of reason; and, with the approval of the 
Congress, the President, the people and the church, Jehovah 
was asked to abdicate the throne of the majesty on high, in favor 
of an unknown idol called Reason. If reason leads to such, 
crimes as were then and thereafter enacted, what shall we say 
of her followers? If the goddoss worshipped by those French 
heathen decreed the guillotine to destroy from fifty to one 
hundred lives a day during the entire period of her reign; the 
trial of men for treason, without allowing any evidence of their 
innocence to be introduced; and the merciless butchery of vast 
numbers so illegally condemned; what shall we say ofthehorlot 
who first impersonated the goddess on her throne in the temple, 
crowned and decorated with plumes and flowers; and after- 
wards, by che cruel treachery of her worshippers, pictured by 
her expiring agonies on the scaffold the death also of the false 
goddess falsely worshipped by a false-hearted people? When 
before or since has a deity been so gaily crowned, and so speed- 
ily executed? And how well her death typified the abdication 
and assassination of reason in France, let the records decide. 
Grave yards were overrun until they had to be enlarged; the 
guillotine, which had now become the reigning king, failed to 
unload the prisons as fast as they were filled; men and w^omen 
were shot down, and thrown into the rivers, until those rivers, in 
times of civil tranquillity, ran red with citizens' gore; boatloads 
were sent out to perish in the w T aters; human skinns were tanned 
and sold in the markets like those of animals; all judicial power 
was vested in a court of twelve, and a jury of fifty men, who de- 
cided cases without hearing any testimony, and could only 



64 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

punish with death. Four men were kept constantly employed 
carting away bodies from the guillotine, and an immense aque- 
duct was found necessary to convey the blood and gore to their 
destination in the nearest stream. Twenty theatres and sixty 
dance houses were kept in daily use; and the Christian religion 
was forbidden to be practiced on pain of death. Strange to say, 
that base creature who guided the ship of state; who glutted his 
fury in the assassination of every rival; who caused an entire 
block of buildings in Paris to be burned, and one entire family 
sent to the guillotine, because one member of that family, a 
beautiful young girl, had planned the monster's death — this 
same inhuman wretch had once been a youth, who had written 
poetry without measure to his lady love; and had been a boy, 
too kind-hearted to kill a fly. A studious, temperate youth was 
he, until his character began to be moulded anew by scepticism 
and ambition. (See W. W. Prottsmans' Lecture on Robes- 
pierre). Well did he succeed in showing that, as Robert Collyer 
says, "Atheism is not an institution, but a destitution." An- 
other writer (Chas. Hare), says: "there is no being eloquent for 
Atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its 
wings, which proves clearly that it is out of its element." "It 
-is impossible to govern the world without God," said Geo. 
Washington. "He must be more than an infidel that lacks faith, 
and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to ac- 
knowledge his obligation." "It is well known," says a facile 
writer, (Rev. T. Williston, M. A. in Microcosm) "that before 
and after the bloody French Revolution, an awfulty corrupt 
state of morals prevailed in France and some other parts of 
Europe. Vice and crime then wore an unblushing front, and a 
shameless immorality prevaded nearly all ranks. The French 
nation was steeped in iniquity and moral filth. Now what, 
more than aught else, was the generating cause of this prevailing 
corruption? Was it not largely ascribable to the anti-Christian, 
Atheistic writings and efforts of such infidels as Voltaire, Rous- 
seau, Diderot, D'Alembert, Holbach, Weishaupt, and others? 
It is a matter of history that at that period infidel books and 
tracts were scattered broadcast throughout France and other 
countries, and that Atheism had the control of the press in 
France, and the control also of the education of youth. To this 



iiistoh'y and philosophy of atheism. 65 



day France has not fully recovered from the demoralizing in- 
fluence of the infidel sentiments that were so industriously and 
so widely circulated by Voltaire and his associates." 

Says Dr. Kellogg, "in the thirteenth century, virtue was 
almost as scarce in France as in ancient Greece. Nobles held 
as mistresses all the young girls of their domains. About every 
fifth person was a bastard. Just before the Revolution, chastity 
was such a rarity that a woman was actually obliged to apolo- 
gize for being virtuous." (Plain Facts, p. 298.) 

Having taken a retrospective view of the doings of Atheism in 
the past ages of the world's history, and traced its undeniable 
results in undermining all science, wrecking all philosophy, and 
dissocializing the human race; we are now prepared to look 
about us in our own country, and view "the monster of such 
dreadful mien" as a thing of the present, menacing our Christian 
civilization, and threatening the political life of our nation. If 
we heed the land marks by the way, we shall doubtless adopt 
the following language of Prof. Seelye as our model of thought: 
4 'A nation's intellectual progress has always followed — not pre- 
ceded — some moral impulse. The history of the fine arts shows 
that some form of religion gave them their earliest impulse. 
There has never been a great genius but has been inspired in 
some sense by religion. The thoughts ef the intellect are lofty 
in proportion as the sentiments of the heart are profound. If 
we begin to attempt to improve men with the intellect, we end 
where we began. Education wil not remove corruption. It 
may guide vice as in ancient Rome and Athens, but will not up- 
root it. A Godless education has no power to purify. In- 
struction in morality, also, has failed to regenerate. No man 
does his duty simply because he knows it, unless he loves it; 
nor are political and social changes effective. Social evil has its 
root in the individual heart, and cannot be removed except by 
influences operating within it." 

Ingersoll predicts a brilliant future for the world, simply on 
the ground of a universal tendency in nature toward higher con- 
ditions; but how, without any God, any future life, or any di- 
vine instruction, he can have a well-grounded hope of this, is 
not easy to discover. Neither does his talk about human 
"ideals growing grander and purer, their liberty enlarging, and 



QQ HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

their love intensifying as the years sweep on," apply at all to 
any heathen country, where the Bible has either been unknown 
or rejected and despised. Only of Christian nations is this true, 
and the inference from this fact is that the religion, not the peo- 
ple, contains the elements of progress. I am inclined . to think 
that some conditions on our part are pre-requisite if we would 
carve out for ourselves a magnificent future, either as individu- 
als or as a nation. Even Col. Ingersoll himself admits that the 
greatest of geniuses are such in spite of adverse circumstances, 
yet he most absurdly relies for his hope of progress on a system 
of necessity which either precludes individual effort altogether, 
or, as Draper confesses, reduces it to a subordinate rank. Mr. 
Ingersoll thinks there is not enough religious liberty in America, 
because Andover theological seminary in Massachusetts pre- 
scribes the religious doctrines which her graduates shall teach. 
But Andover has a sacred right to do this, at least as much as 
Ingersoll has to ask his hearers to swear never to give a dollar 
to any orthodox church. Free denominational contributions 
have built the institution, and endowed its professorships; and 
to take from its patrons the right to dictate its course of in- 
struction therein, would not be American Protestant liberty, but 
French infidel anarchy and despotism. 

Ingersoll again declares that after a God lias been shown be 
yond doubt to exist, there will be plenty of time to kneel. But 
must man wait to know everything before he will believe any- 
thing? Only omniscience itself is adequate to the task of anni 
hilating objections arising from ignorance. To doubt aw^ay the 
foundations of knowledge has been the mistake of all the scep- 
tical know-nothing philosopher's that have ever lived. Would 
it not have been rather singular if the first man ever born into the 
world had adopted sceptical views, and refused to eat until 
after the stomach had been analyzed and demonstrated to be an 
organ capable of digesting food; and the food itself had been 
chemically examined and shown to possess nutritive properties? 
Or suppose he had refused to see until a philosophical treatise 
had been written on the optical arrangement of the lenses of the 
eye; or to hear, (or believe he heard) until the uses of the tym- 
panum and semicircular canals had been scientifically demon- 
strated, would he not have basked in all the glory of sceptical 



1IISTOUV AND PHILOSOPHY OF A.THEISM. 07 



p&endo philosophy, otherwise known as bea itly stupidity? The 
religious faculties are just as natural as any other instinct ot 
function of human nature, and should not be hampered or re- 
strained by philosophic know-nothings emptying their quivers 
fullof ridicule and sneers. As one (F. P. Powers) has well 
said, "if people made half the effort to understand the Bible that 
they make to discredit it, they would not be so funny as they 
are now, but they would know more." 

Beginning with the infant in its mother's arms, infidelity cor- 
rupts every fountain of thought and feeling. The sceptics would 
have all the restraints of parental authority removed, and all 
checks to vice and immorality eliminated from the public schools. 
Irigersoll says to parents, "do not have it in your minds that you 
must govern your children, and that they must obey." (Crofl 
Then the Bible is to be reprobated, and its place supplied by 
such vile literature as the Woodliul and Heyvvood pamphlets. 
.V sceptical writer has well said that "it is difficult at present to 
even conceive how any mechanical or physiological theory of 
humanity as a whole can evolve, for the individual man, amoral 
motive power. The worship of success," he continues, "signally 
exemplified in the adoration of a character such as that of 
Napoleon, seems to be the morality of evolution supplanting 
that of Christianity." The astute author of "Deeper Harmonies 
of Science and Religion (Pop. Sc. Monthly, 1875), speaking of 
the causes oi immorality among sceptics, says, "what determines 
their actions is a belief in some sort of necessity, some fatality 
with which it is vain to struggle. Whether it deserves to be 
called a faith at all, whether it justifies men in living, and in 
calling others into life, may be doubted." Yet to this fatality, 
our modern sceptics attribute all progress. Mr. Ingersoll would 
have us "believe that science has produced every good' thing, 
civilization included; and that Christianity alone, without the 
help of science, has constructed all the shot-guns, revolvers and 
cannon. Such fanfaronade by a man who claims to know more 
than all the Christians that have ever lived, is appropriately 
answered by the question, what infidel or heathen nation, how- 
ever destitute of useful inventions, has ever refused to take our 
deadly missiles and whisky, or tried to adopt any of our better 
customs and inventions. It is only the vices of civilization that 



68 HISTOEY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

attract infidel minds. We might also mention the fact that no 
religion ever invented any deadly missile, but Christianity has 
opposed the progress of science in this respect, because, while 
science may indeed profit by every invention, however inhuman, 
the Christian religion can only profit by those inventions which 
benefit the human race. 

The Declaration of Independence, our first charter of liberty, 
refers all national blessings to divine providence; and, since the 
dawn of liberty in America, Christian institutions have been 
generally encouraged and fostered as the well understood con- 
ditions upon which our freedom depends. But this has ever 
been in opposition to the wishes of a noisy and defiant minority, 
made up largely from the slums of Europeon cities, whose motto 
continues to' be the destruction of all religious restraints. Only 
a few years ago, the editor of a certain infidel paper in ]S T . Y. 
City undertook to defy the laws of the Uniced States wiiich pro- 
hibited the transmission of obscene books and pictures through 
the mails, by openly selling a book which three judges of the 
Supreme Court had pronounced unfit for circulation, and for the 
selling of which two other prominent infidels had already 
served a term of imprisonment; and when his case came into 
court, and a properly empannelled jury, thoroughly instructed 
by the judge to allow no religious bias to interfere with their 
judgment, had pronounced the book a vile and obscene one, 
and the prisoner himself confessed that it contained sentiments 
which he could not indorse, and a very prominent naturalist 
lecturer and writer (B. F. Underwood) had referred in no very 
gentle terms to "the general obscenity of his journal and the 
scurrility and coarseness of his articles against religion, his of- 
fenses against decenc}^," &c, &., and a very prominent Spirit- 
ualist lecturer and writer (J. W. Peebles) had said the book he 
was illegally vending was "flippant, frivolous, unphysiological, 
and in the estimation of many of the best men in the country, 
encourages looseness of life and laxity of the marital obliga- 
tions;" and after the editor himself had been cornered on the 
question of his own immoral practices, and had to plead tempo- 
rary insanity in order to satisfy the more scrupulous of his pat- 
ron s; — after all this series of "revelations from Pandemonium," 
a very large majority of the infidels and so-called Free Thinkers 



HISTOUY AND PHILOSOPHY 01< AfHMSM. 69 

of the country stood by this same editor, giving hiin outspoken 
sympathy, and cash support. One hundred thousand names 
were handed into Congress attached to petitions demanding the 
repeal of all anti-obscenity laws; and 117 out of 125 original 
leagues, including well-known officials thereof, gave him their 
unqualified endorsement. Can any sane man, in view of these 
facts, deny that Atheism holds a dangerous element of our politi- 
cal and social life? 

When the case had been fairly presented by the advocates of 
both parties, Congress voted to sustain the law, and punish its 
violators, by a vote so unanimous as not to disturb the tran- 
quillity of an assembly almost equally divided on political is- 
sues. But one of the editor' s correspondents says in a published 

letter in vindication of the editor: "It is not B and S as 

law abiding citizens that humanity is to bless, but is is B 

and S as law-breakers and law-defyers that unborn millions 

ought to bless. If the people of N. Y. had not been the very- 
est slaves that crawl the earth, the city of New York would 
have been reduced to ashes before they would let him go to 
Albany prison." (Seward Mitchell, Washington D. C, Sept. 
1879.) Such sentiments as the above, by their hints at the 
beauties of blood shed, and the necessity for revolution, betray 
their author' s kinship to the actors in the bloody dramas of 
Paris and Baden. 

Now why was this editor so extolled? Why was his paper 
overcrowded for months with congratulations and cash ac- 
knowledgements? Simply because he had boldly and openly 
advocated the Epicurean doctrine of sensualism by selling a 
filthy book, and contesting in court for a right to do so. And 
because he was made to suffer for his temerity, we hear the hue 
and cry of ecclesiastical oppression, notwithstanding he could 
have been convicted by the common law, older than the nation, 



70 HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 

without reference to any statute. Neither Mr. Ingersoll nor 
Mr. Wakeman was shrewd enough to observe this, and escape 
the obloquy which now attaches itself to the proceedings of the 
insane anti-religious mob which met at Cincinnati to organize a 
ijew anti-Christian political party. Says Hudson Tuttle: "The 
cause of liberalism has been presented in no nattering light by 
the Cincinnati convention; worse, it has been made a mockery 
and a disgrace * * * That out of a mass meeting a political 
party could be formed, was an absurd conception. Out of such 
a mass meeting nothing but dishonor to the cause of free 
thought could come. A political party having for its object op- 
position to the church * * * would be the most bigoted 
party in the world. It would deny the very right for which it 
claimed the necessity of its existence, as it would divide the 
people on a question which, by the Constitution, 
is debarred from politics. ****** We deeply 
sympathize with Mr. Bennett, yet we regret that he has identi- 
fied his actions with the cause of free thought; and that men like 
Ingersoll have seconded his efforts; yet, while we pity, we can- 
not forget that Cupids Yoks is not only a fcrashy but obscene 
book, if ever a book was obscene." Mr. Tuttle is in full sym- 
pathy with Liberalism, though himself a Spiritualist; and his 
authority is good enough to settle the question. I believe most 
heartily in free thought, and am opposed to all popes, whether 
in Borne or Peoria; but I believe that a revenue drawn from the 
fines and imprisonment of those monsters of iniquity who cor- 
rupt the minds of youth with their immoral literature, is more 
honorable than one derived from the taxation of those church 
and college edifices which cause the "liberalists" so much 
anxiety, and I hold that decent people everywhere ought to 
spontaneously reprobate the man who would favor the forma • 
tion of a political party to protect the smut-dealer and to put 
down the churches. Prof. Jamieson in one of his debates point- 
ed to Frothingham as a man who could not be supposed to 



IIIST0PY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM. 71 

indorse a bad cause; but now, not only has O. B. Prothingham 
repudiated both the cause and his prime associates, but I have 
it on proper and competent authority that even before this the 
Prof sown wife, a sister to that Illinois chieftian of the liberals, 
repudiated on her death bed the religion of both her brother 
and husband, and would have Christians to pray at her bedside. 
Such an evanescent and vitiating philosophy, that makes living 
men bad and dying men and women afraid, is not worthy to 
come into competition with our holy religion. Let it be buried 
without any unnecessary formality, with all its pseudo's and 
synonyms; and let us begin a candid study of that imposing 
structure called Christianity, whose principles form the ground 
work of our prosperity, and the hope of our immortality. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS % 



111 

021 898 586 5 



THE 



HISTORY END PHILOSOPHY 



— OF — 



iTHEISHj 



A Supplement to this work 9 will be issued from the press 

about September 1st. Address the author 

at Hartford, Kansas. 



